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THE ROMANCE OF A GREAT STORE 



















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The Romance of a 
Great Store y 



by 

Edward Hnngerford 

Author of 
'The Personality of American Cities/' "The Modern Railroad" etc. 



Illustrated by 

Vernon Howe Bailey 



c I^ew York 

Robert M. McBride & Company 
1922 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
ROBERT M. MCBEIDE * CO. 






Printed in the United States of America 



Published, 1922 

FEB 24 1922 
§)CI.A654749 




To 
the Men and Women 

°f 

The Great Macy Family 

Whose Fidelity and Interest, 
Whose Enthusiasm and Ability 

Have Uphuilded 

A Lasting Institution of Worth 

in 

The Heart of a Vast City 

This Book is Affectionately dedicated 

by its Author. 

EH. 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 




PAGE 


Introduction 




. . . ix 



Yesterday 

I. The Ancestral Beginnings of Macy's 3 
II. The New York That Macy First 

Saw 7 

III. Fourteenth Street Days .... 31 

IV. The Coming of Isidor and Nathan 

Straus 47 

V. The Store Treks Uptown .... 63 

Today 

I. A Day in a Great Store 87 

II. Organization in a Modern Store . 109 

III. Buying to Sell 145 

IV. Displaying and Selling the Goods . 163 
V. Distributing the Goods .... 185 

VI. The Macy Family 201 

VII. The Family at Play 233 

Tomorrow 

I. In Which Macy's Prepares to Build 

Anew 255 

II. L'Envoi 279 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The New York to Which Macy Came — in 1858 



Frontispiece 



s 



FACING PAGE 



The Beginnings of Macy's 

The Fourteenth Street Store of Other Days 
The Herald Square of Ante-Macy Days 

The Macy's of Today 

Where Milady of Manhattan Shops . . 
The Science of Modern Salesmanship . 
The Summer Home of the Macy Family . 



18 

34 

66 

82 

114^" 
210 
242 



Introduction 

"/CAVEAT EMPTOR," the Romans said, in 
\^A their day. 

"Let the Buyer beware," we would read that phrase, 
today. 

For nearly four thousand years, perhaps longer, 
caveat emptor ruled the hard world of barter. Yet 
for the past sixty years, or thereabouts, a new principle 
has come into merchandising. You may call it 
progress, call it idealism, call it ethics, call it what you 
will. I simply call it good business. 

Caveat emptor has become a phrase thrust out of 
good merchandising. It is a pariah. The decent 
merchant of today despises it. On the contrary he 
prides himself upon the honor of his calling, upon the 
high value of his good name, untarnished. The man 
or the woman who comes into his store may come with 
the faith or the simplicity of the child. He or she 
may even be bereft of sight, itself — yet deal in faith 
and fearlessly. 

Caveat emptor is indeed a dead phrase. 

How and whence came this murder of a commercial 
derelict? 

You may laugh and at first you may scoff, but the 
fact remains that the development of the department 

ix 



Introduction 



store as we know it in the United States today first 
began some sixty or sixty-five years ago. And almost 
coincidently began the development of a code of morals 
in merchandising such as was all but undreamed of in 
this land, at any rate up to a decade or two before the 
coming of the Civil War. Not that there were no 
honest merchants in those earlier days of the republic. 
Oh no, there was a plenty of them — men whose in- 
tegrity and whose sincerity were as little to be doubted 
as are those same qualities in our best merchants of 
today. Only yesterday these honest men were in the 
minority. The moral code in merchandising was yet 
inchoate, unformed. 

It might remain unformed, intangible today if it 
had not been for the coming of the department store. 
The enormous consolidation and concentration that 
went to make these enterprises possible brought with 
them a competition — bitter and to the end unflinch- 
ing — which hesitated at no legitimate means for the 
gaining of its end. But competition quickly found 
that the best means — the finest battle-sword — was 
honest commercial practice, and so girded that sword 
to its belt and bade caveat emptor begone. 

The great department store around which these 
chapters are written assumes for itself, neither yes- 
terday, today nor tomorrow, any monopoly of this 
virtue of commercial honesty. But it does assert, and 
will continue to assert that it was at least among the 
pioneers in the complete banishment of caveat emftory 
that its founder — the man whose name it so proudly 
bears today — fought for these high principles when 



Introduction xi 

the fighting was at the hardest and the temptations to 
move in the other direction were most alluring. 

Of these principles you shall read in the oncoming 
chapters of this book. There are many, they are 
varied — in some respects they vary greatly from those 
upon which other and equally successful and equally 
honest merchandising establishments are today oper- 
ated. Macy's has no quarrel with any of its com- 
petitors. It merely writes upon the record that, for 
itself, it is quite satisfied with the merchandising 
principles that its founder and the men who came after 
him saw fit to establish. Upon those the store has 
prospered — and prospered greatly. And because of 
such prosperity — social as well as commercial — because 
it feels that its selling principles are quite as valuable 
to its patrons as to the store itself, it has no intention 
of giving change to them. Macy's of today is like in 
soul and spirit to Macy's of yesterday j Macy's of 
tomorrow is planned to be like unto the Macy's of 
today — only vastly larger in its scope and influence. 

For the convenience of the reader this book has 
been divided into three great parts, or books. Time 
has formed the logical factor of division. Time, as 
in the theater, forms these three books, or acts — 
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. They move in sequence. 
The stage-hands are placing the setting for the New 
York of yesterday — the New York that already has 
begun to fade, far from the eyes of even the oldest 
of the humans who shall come to read these pages. 
It is a charming New York, this American city of the 
late 'fifties, the city whose ladies go shopping in hoop- 



xii Introduction 

skirts and in crinoline. It has dignity, taste, bustle, 
enterprise. 

But anon of these. The stage is set. The director's 
foot comes stamping down upon the boards. The 
curtain rises. The first act begins. 



Yesterday 



I. The Ancestral Beginnings of 
Macy's 

INTERWOVEN into the history of the ancient 
island of Nantucket are the names and annals of 
some of the earliest of our American families — the 
Coffins, the Eldredges, the Myricks, and the Macys. 
Their forbears came from England to America fully 
ten generations ago. They settled upon the remote 
and wind-swept isle and there to this day many of 
their descendants ply their vocations and have their 
homes. 

In the beginning the vocation of these settlers was 
found to lie almost invariably upon a single path; and 
that path led down to the sea. They were sea-faring 
folk, those early residents of Nantucket: God-fearing, 
simple of speech and of action, yet mentally keen and 
alert. And from them sprang the segment of a race 
which was soon to grow far beyond the narrow barriers 
of the little island and to spread its splendid enthusiasm 
and energy far into a newborn land. 

Among the very earliest of these Nantucket settlers 
was one Thomas Macy, who, from the beginning, took 
his fair place in the development of its fishing 
and its whaling industries. From him came a long 
line of descendants — a clean and sturdy record — and 
in the eighth generation of these there was born — on 

3 



4 The Romance of a Great Store 

August 29, 1822 — as the son of John and Eliza Myrick 
Macy, the man whose name chiefly concerns this 
book — Rowland Hussey Macy. 

The record of this young man's youth is not so con- 
sequential as to be worth the setting down in detail. 
It is enough perhaps to know that at the age of fifteen 
he followed the common Nantucket custom of those 
days and went away to seaj upon a whaling voyage 
which was to consume four long years before again he 
saw the belf ried white spire of the South Church rising 
through the trees back of the harbor and which was to 
make him in fact as well as in name, Captain Macy. 

Three years later he married. He chose for his 
wife, Miss Louisa Houghton, of Fairlees, Vermont. 
Their pleasant married life continued for thirty-three 
years, until the day of Mr. Macy's death. Mrs. Macy 
lived for several years afterwards, dying in New York 
City in 1886. They had three children, one of whom, 
Mrs. James F. Sutton, the widow of the founder of 
the American Art Galleries in New York, still survives 
and is living at her suburban home in Westchester 
County. 

Such is the simple statistical record of the man who 
lived to be one of New York's great merchant princes, 
who, upon the simple foundations of good merchandis- 
ing, of strength, integrity and initiative, upbuilded one 
of the great and most distinctive businesses of the 
greatest city of the two American continents. Back 
of it is another record — not so simple or so quickly 
told. It is the story of successes and of sorrows, of 
triumphs and of failures — but in the end of the final 



The Ancestral Beginnings of Macy's 5 

triumph of New England conscience and energy and 
vision. It is with this last story that this book has its 
beginning. 

It was not many moons after his marriage that young 
Macy started in business, in store-keeping in Boston. 
He was convinced that the sea was no calling for a 
married man, and, with the Yankee's native taste for 
trading, decided that the career of the merchant was 
the one that had the largest appeal to him. So he 
made immediate steps in that direction. 

The record of that early Boston store is meagre. It 
is enough, perhaps, to say here and now that it failed, 
and that if its collapse had really dismayed the young 
merchant, this book would not have been written. As 
it was, the failure seemed but to stir him toward 
renewed efforts. He stood in the back of his little 
store and flipped a coin. It was a habit of his in all 
periods of indecision. 

"Heads up, and I go north," said he. "Tails and 
next week I start south. " 

Heads came. And Rowland Macy and his wife 
went north. They went to Haverhill and there upon 
the bank of the Merrimac he set up his second store. 
This venture was far more successful than the first. 
It prospered, if not in large degree, at least far enough 
to encourage its proprietor. But he did not cease 
regretting that the coin had not come tails-up. Then 
he would have gone to New York. For New York, 
he was convinced, was about to become the undisputed 
metropolis of the land. Already it was going ahead, 



6 The Romance of a Great Store 

by leaps and bounds. And men who slipped into it 
quickly and who possessed the right qualities of com- 
mercial ability would go ahead quickly. Rowland 
Macy was convinced of this. 

He was not a man who lost much time in vain 
repinings. To New York he would go. He suited 
action to thought, sold his Haverhill business at a fair 
profit, again bundled his wife and small family to- 
gether and set out for the metropolis of the New 
World. 



II. The New York That Macy 
First Saw 

IN 1858 New York was just beginning to come into 
its own. It was ceasing to be an overgrown 
town — half village, half city — and was attaining a real 
metropolitanism. It had already reached a population 
of 650,000 persons, and was adding to that number at 
the rate of from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand 
annually. Its real and personal property was assessed 
at upward of $513,000,000. New building was going 
apace at a fearful rate. Already the town was fairly 
closely builded up to Forty-ninth Street, and was paved 
to Forty-second. Above it up on Manhattan Island 
were many suburban villages: Bloomingdale, where 
Mayor Fernando Wood had his residence, upon a plot 
about the size of the present crossing of Broadway and 
Seventy-second Street, Yorkville, Harlem and Man- 
hattanville. To reach the first two of these communi- 
ties one could take certain of the horse railroads. John 
Stephenson had perfected his horse-car and these 
modern equipages — how quaint and old-fashioned they 
would seem today — were already plying in Second, 
Third, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Slowly but 
surely they were displacing the omnibuses, which dated 
back more than half a century. A goodly number of 
these still remained, however j twenty-six lines employ- 

7 



8 The Romance of a Great Store 

ing in all 489 separate stages — New York certainly was 
a considerable town. 

To reach the more remote communities of Manhat- 
tan Island — Harlem or Manhattanville — one took the 
steam-cars: either the trains of the Hudson River Rail- 
road in the little old station at Chambers Street and 
West Broadway, from which they proceeded up to the 
west side of the island and, as to this day, through a 
goodly portion of Tenth Avenue, or else the trains of 
the New York & Harlem, or the New York & New 
Haven, from their separate terminals back of the City 
Hall and Canal Street up through Fourth Avenue, the 
tunnel under Yorkville Hill and thence across the 
Harlem Plain to the river of the same name. A little 
later these railroads were to consolidate their terminals, 
in a huge block-square structure at Madison and Fourth 
Avenues, Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Streets, 
the forerunner of the present Madison Square Garden j 
but the first of the three successive Grand Central 
Stations was not to come until 1871. 

Fifth Avenue, too, was just beginning to come into 
its own. Some of the handsome homes in the lower 
reaches of that thoroughfare and upon the northern 
edge of Washington Square which have been suffered 
to remain until this day had already been built and an 
exodus had begun to them from the older houses to the 
south. All of the churches were gone from down 
town with but a few exceptions, the most conspicuous 
of which were the two Episcopalian churches in Broad- 
way — Trinity and St. Paul's — the Roman Catholic 
Church of St. Peter's in Barclay Street, St. George's in 



The New York that Macy First Saw 9 

Beekman, the North Dutch in William, the Middle 
Dutch in Nassau and the Brick Presbyterian, also in 
Beekman Street. This last, in fact, had already been 
sold for secular purposes and had been abandoned. 
The congregation was buildmg a new house up in the 
fields at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street, a 
step which was regarded by its older members as ex- 
tremely radical and precarious, to put it mildly. The 
ancient home of the Middle Dutch Reformed had also 
gone for secular purposes. In it was housed the New 
York Post Office, already a brisk place, which soon was 
to outgrow its overcrowded quarters and to expand 
into its ugly citadel at the apex of the City Hall Park. 

The two great fires — the one in 1833 an< ^ ^e other 
in 1845 — had removed from the lower portions of the 
city many of their more ancient and unsightly struc- 
tures. The rebuilding which had followed them gave 
to the growing town much larger structures of a finer 
and more dignified architecture. Six and seven story 
buildings were quite common. This represented the 
practical limitations of a generation which knew not 
elevators, although the new Fifth Avenue Hotel which 
already was being planned upon the site of the old 
Hippodrome, at Broadway and Twenty-third and 
Twenty-fourth Streets, was soon to have the first of 
these contraptions that the world had ever seen. 

Gone, too, were other old landmarks of downtown — 
some of them in their day distinctly famous — the City 
Hall, the Union Hotel, the Tontine Coffee House, the 
Bridewell and the reservoir of the Manhattan Company 
in Chambers Street. The new Croton Works, with 



10 The Romance of a Great Store 

their wonderful aqueduct, the High Bridge, upon 
which it crossed the ravine of the Harlem, and the 
dual reservoirs at Forty-second Street and at Eighty- 
sixth, had rendered this last structure obsolete. The 
State Prison had disappeared from its former site at 
the foot of East Twenty-third Street. A new group 
of structures at Sing Sing had replaced the old upon 
the island of Manhattan. 

Even then the elegant New York was moving 
rapidly uptown. Union Square, still known, however, 
to older New Yorkers as Union Place, was the heart 
of its life and fashion. It was lined by the fine houses 
of the elect and two of the most superb hotels of the 
metropolis, the Brevoort and the Union Square, while 
the Clarendon, which was destined soon to house the 
young Prince of Wales, stood but a block away. At 
Irving Place and Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets had 
just been completed the new Academy of Music. New 
York at last had a real opera-house, with a stage and 
fittings large enough and adequate to present music- 
drama upon a scale equal to that of the larger European 
capitals. She had plenty of theaters, too: the Broad- 
way, the Bowery, Laura Keene's, Niblo's Garden, and 
Wood & Christy's Negro Minstrels, chief amongst 
them. While down at the point where Chatham Street 
(now Park Row) debouched into Broadway, Barnum's 
Museum already stood, with its gay bannered front 
beckoning eagerly to the countrymen. 

And how the countrymen did flock into New York — 
in those serene and busy days before the, coming of a 



The New York that Macy First Saw 1 1 

tragic war. New York harbor was a busy place. For 
not all of them came by the well-filled trains of the 
three railroads that reached in upon Manhattan Island. 
There were sailing-ships and steamboats a plenty 
bumping their noses against the overcrowded piers of 
the growing city; ferries from Brooklyn and Williams- 
burgh and Jersey City and Hoboken and Astoria and 
Staten Island; steamboat lines down the harbor to 
Amboy and to Newark and to Elizabethtown; and up 
the Sound to Fall River, to Providence and to the 
Connecticut ports. But the finest steamers of all plied 
the Hudson. There the rivalry was keenest, the 
opportunities for profit apparently the greatest. And 
despite the fact that New York was already the port 
of many important ocean lines — the Cunard, the 
Collins, the Glasgow, the Havre, the Hamburg and 
the Panama steamers, for the fast-growing fame of the 
metropolis of the New World was already attracting 
great numbers of travelers from overseas — the fact 
also remains that when the Daniel Drew y of the Albany 
Night Line, was first built, in 1863, she exceeded in 
size and in passenger-carrying capacity any ocean liner 
plying in and out of the port of New York. 

So came the countrymen and the residents of the 
other smaller towns and cities of the land, along with 
many, many foreigners, to this new vortex of humanity. 
They found their way, not alone to the hotels of the 
Union Square district, but to such equally distinguished 
houses as the Astor, the Brevoort, the St. Nicholas, the 
Metropolitan, the New York. They went to the 
theaters and almost invariably they climbed the brown- 



12 The Romance of a Great Store 

stone spire of old Trinity, in order to drink in the view 
that it commanded: the wide sweep of busy city close 
at hand, the more distant ranges of the upper and 
lower harbors, the North and the East Rivers, Long 
Island, Staten Island, New Jersey and the western 
slopes of the Orange Mountains. And some, loving 
New York and realizing the fair opportunities that it 
offered, came to stay. 

In among this throng of folk who rushed into the 
town in 1858 there came — among those who came to 
stay — Rowland H. Macy. The partial success of his 
Haverhill store, to an extent overbalancing the initial 
failure in Boston, had brought him into the metropolis 
of America, the city of wider, if indeed not unlimited 
opportunity. In those days there were few large stores 
in New Yorkj nothing to be in the least compared with 
its great department stores of today. One heard of its 
hotels, its churches, its theaters, its banks, but very 
little indeed of its mercantile establishments. They 
were, for the most part, very small and exceedingly 
individual. They were known as shops and well de- 
served that title. There were a few exceptions, of 
course: A. T. Stewart's — still on Broadway between 
Worth and Chambers Streets — Ridley^s, Lord & 
Taylor's and John DanielPs in Grand Street (this last 
at Broadway), McNamee & Company's, Arnold, Con- 
stable & Co., McCreery's, Hcarn's, and one or two 
others, perhaps, of particular distinction. 

It is hardly possible that Macy, as he found his way 
into these larger establishments, believed that he might 



The New York that Macy First Saw 13 

ever in his own enterprise match their elegance and 
distinction. It is difficult to believe that in those very 
earliest days he had the vision of a department store. 
At any rate the extremely modest establishment which 
he opened at 204 Sixth Avenue, between Thirteenth 
and Fourteenth Streets, in conjunction with his brother- 
in-law, Samuel S. Houghton, devoted itself at first, 
and for a long time afterward, exclusively to the sale 
of fancy goods. For specializing was the fashion of 
that day and generation; John Daniell sold nothing but 
ribbons and trimmings then; Aiken laces, and Stewart's 
chiefly dress-goods. 

Yet Macy had vision. The department store idea 
must slowly have forced itself into his mind. For, 
five years later, we find his small business, originally 
on Sixth Avenue, just a door or two below Fourteenth 
Street, expanding so rapidly that he was forced to 
secure more room for it. And this despite the fact 
that not only was he two long blocks distant from 
Broadway but the particular corner which he had 
chosen for his store was known locally as unlucky — two 
or three other stores had gone bankrupt on it. Macy 
had no intention of going bankrupt. He added to his 
original shop the store at 62 West Fourteenth Street, 
at right angles to and connecting in the rear with it, and 
in this he installed a department of hats and millinery. 
He was beginning to come and come quickly — this 
country merchant to whom at first New York refused 
to extend either recognition or credit. 

Now was the complete department store idea fairly 
launched, for the first time in the history of America, 



14 The Romance of a Great Store 

if not in the entire world. Yet, when one came to 
fair and final analysis, it represented nothing else than 
the country-store of the small town or cross-roads 
greatly expanded in volume. And so, after all, it is 
barely possible that the canny New Englander may 
have had the germ of his surpassing idea implanted in 
his mind, a full decade or more before he had the 
opportunity to make use of it. Incidentally, it may 
be set down here, that Mr. Macy in the rapidly recur- 
ring trips to Paris which he found necessary to make 
in the interest of his business developed a great 
admiration for the Bon Marche of that city. He 
studied its methods carefully and adopted them when- 
ever he found the opportunity. 

From hats to dress-goods — the addition of still 
another adjoining store was inevitable — came as a fairly 
natural sequence. And one finds the successful young 
merchant who had had the enterprise and the initiative 
to leave Broadway — supposedly the supreme shopping 
street of the New York of that day — laying in his 
stocks of alpaca, of black bombazine, of silks and 
muslins, sheetings and pillow-cases and all that with 
these go. The idea once born was adhered to. As it 
broadened it gained prosperity. And as a natural 
sequence there came gradually and with a further 
steady enlargement of the premises, jewelry, toilet- 
goods and the so-called Vienna goods. Toys were 
added in 1869, an d gradually house-furnishing goods, 
confectionery, soda water, books and stationery, boys' 
clothing, ladies' underwear, crockery, glassware, silver- 



The New York that Macy First Saw 1 5 

ware, boots and shoes, dress-goods, dressmaking, ready- 
to-wear clothing, and, in due time, a restaurant. 

For many years it was the only store in town to 
carry soaps and perfumes. This, of itself, brought to 
the store a clientele of its own — the most beautiful 
women of New York, among the most notable of them, 
Rose Ey tinge, the actress, who was just then coming 
to the pinnacle of her fame. 

Mr. Macy, accompanied by his wife and daughter — 
the latter of whom is still alive at an advanced age — 
took up his residence at first over the store and then, 
a little later, in a small house in West Twelfth Street, 
within easy walking distance of his place of business. 
From this he afterward moved to a larger residence in 
West Forty-ninth Street. He was a man of sturdy 
build, of more than medium height and thick-set, 
extremely affable in manner. He wore a heavy beard, 
and an old employee of the store was wont to liken 
his appearance to that of the poet, Longfellow. His 
tendency toward black cigars and to appearing in the 
store in his shirt-sleeves did not heighten the resem- 
blance, however. 

He was a man of almost indomitable will. Such a 
quality was quite as necessary for success in those days 
as in these. The modern ideas of beneficence and 
generosity to the employee were little dreamed of then. 
The successful merchant, like the successful manufac- 
turer or the successful banker, drove his men and drove 
them hard. Macy was no exception to this rule. If 
he had been, it is doubtful if he would have lasted 



1 6 The Romance of a Great Store 

long. For while '58 was a year of seeming prosperity 
in New York it also followed directly one of the 
notable panic-years in the financial history of the 
United States and was soon to be followed by four 
years of internecine struggle in the nation — in which 
its credit and financial resources were to be strained to 
the utmost. 

It is entirely possible that the record of the Macy 
store might not be set down as one of final and over- 
whelming success, if it had not been for the driving 
force of a woman, who was brought into the organi- 
zation not long after the opening of the original 
store in lower Sixth Avenue. This woman, Margaret 
Getchell, was also born in Nantucket. She had been 
a school-teacher upon the island, until the loss of one 
of her eyes forced her to seek less confining work. She 
drifted to New York and, taking advantage of a girl- 
hood acquaintance with Mr. Macy, asked him for 
employment in his store. He knew her and was glad 
to take her in. She, in turn, engaged rooms in a flat 
just over a picture-frame store, in Sixth Avenue, across 
from her employment, so that she might devote every 
possible moment of her time, day and night, to its 
success. 

So was born a real executive — and in a day when the 
possibilities of women ever becoming business execu- 
tives were as remote seemingly as that they might ever 
fly. For decades after she had gone, she left the 
impress of her remarkable personality upon the store. 
An attractive figure she was: a small, slight woman, 
with masses of glorious hair and a pert upturn to her 



The New York that Macy .First Saw 17 

nose, while the loss of her eye was overcome, from the 
point of view of appearance at least, by the wearing of 
an artificial one, which she handled so cleverly that 
many folk knew her for a long time without realizing 
her misfortune. 

At every turn, Margaret Getchell was a clever 
woman. Once when Mr. Macy had imported a won- 
derful mechanical singing-bird — a thing quite as un- 
usual in that early day as was the phonograph when it 
came upon the market — and its elaborate mechanism 
had slipped out of order, it was she, with the aid of a 
penknife, a screw-driver and a pair of pliers — I pre- 
sume that she also used a hair-pin — who took it entirely 
apart and put it together again. And at another time 
she trained two cats to permit themselves to be arrayed 
in dolPs clothing and to sleep for hours in twin-cribs, 
to the great amusement and delectation of the visitors 
to the store. Later she caused a photograph to be 
made of the exhibit, which was retailed in great quanti- 
ties to the younger customers. Miss Getchell was 
nothing if not businesslike. 

It was her keen, commercial acumen that made her 
alert in the heart center of the early store — the cashier's 
office. She tolerated neither discrepancies nor irregu- 
larities there. There it was that the New England 
school-ma'm showed itself most keenly. Did a sales- 
woman overcharge a patron two dollars? And did the 
cashier accept and pass the check? Then the cashier 
must pay the two dollars out of her meagre pay- 
envelope on Saturday night. "Overs" were treated 
the same as "unders." It made no difference that the 



1 8 The Romance of a Great Store 

store was already ahead two dollars on the transaction. 
Discipline was the thing. Discipline would keep that 
sort of offense from being repeated many times, and 
Macy's from ever being given the unsavory reputation 
of making a practice of overcharging. 

"Don't ever erase a figure or change it, no matter 
what seems to be the logical reason in your own mind," 
she kept telling her cashiers. "The very act implies 
dishonesty." 

So does the New England conscience ever lean back- 
ward. 

Yet it is related of this same Margaret Getchell that 
when a little and comparatively friendless girl had 
been admitted to the cashier's cage — a decided inno- 
vation in those days — and had been found in an 
apparent peculation of three dollars and promptly dis- 
charged by Mr. Macy, Miss Getchell dropped every- 
thing else and went to work on behalf of the little 
cashier. Intuitively she felt that another of her sex 
in the cage had made the theft — a young woman who 
had come into the store from a prominent up-state 
family to learn merchandising. The up-state young 
woman was fond of dress. Her dress demands far 
exceeded her salary. Of that Miss Getchell was sure. 

Yet intuition is one thing and proof quite another. 
For a fortnight the store manager worked upon her 
surpassing problem. She induced Macy to suspend 
for a time his order of discharge and she kept putting 
the women cashiers in relays in the cage, to suit her 
own fancy and her own plans. The petty thefts con- 
tinued. But not for long. The plans worked. The 



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The New York that Macy First Saw 1 9 

altered checks were found to be all in the time of one 
of the cashiers — and that was not the one who had been 
discharged. Miss Getchell drove to the home of Miss 
Upper New York and there, in the presence of her 
family, got both confession and reparation. 

She was forever seeking new lines of activities for 
the store — branching out here, branching out there, and 
turning most of these new ventures into lines of 
resounding profits. "If necessary, we shall handle 
everything except one," she is reputed to have said. 
And upon being asked what that one was, she replied 
brusquely, "Coffins." Once she embarked Macy upon 
the grocery business- — whole decades before the estab- 
lishment of the present huge grocery department — and 
while eventually the store was forced to drop for a 
time this line of merchandise, she succeeded in taking 
so much business from New York's then leading firm 
of grocers that they came to Macy, himself, and begged 
him to drop the competition. 

In the retailing world of that day, tradition and 
habit still governed and with an iron hand. Stores 
opened early in the morning and kept open until late 
in the evening, and did this six days of the week. 
Their workers rose and left their homes — before dawn 
in many months of the year — and did not return to 
them until well after dark. Yet they did not complain, 
for that was the fashion of the times and was recog- 
nized as such. Wages were as low as the hours were 
long. But food-costs also were low, and rentals but a 
tiny fraction of their present figure. The apartment 



20 The Romance of a Great Store 

house had not yet come to New York. It was a 
development set for a full two decades later. The 
store-workers lived in boarding-houses, in small fur- 
nished rooms or with their families. The greater part 
of them resided within walking distance of their 
employment. 

Mr. Macy had all of his fair share of traditional 
New England thrift. One of the favorite early anec- 
dotes of "the old man/' as his fellow-workers were 
prone to call him, and with no small show of affection, 
concerned his refusal to permit shades to be placed 
upon the gas-jets in the store, saying that he paid for 
the light and so wanted the full value for his money. 
He was skeptical, at the best, about innovations. 
Moreover, necessity compelled him to keep close watch 
upon the pennies. At one time he reduced the weekly 
wages of his cash-girls from two dollars to one-dollar- 
and-a-half , saying that the war was over and he could 
no longer afford to pay war wages. Yet when a 
courageous sales-clerk went to him and told him that 
she could not possibly live any longer upon her weekly 
wage of three dollars, he promptly raised it a dollar, 
without argument or hesitation. And the following 
week he automatically extended the same increase to 
every other clerk in the store. 

Labor conditions in that day were hard, indeed. 
The working hours, as I have already said, were long. 
In regular times the store hours were from eight to 
six, instead of from nine to five-thirty, as today. On 
busy days the clerks worked an extra hour, putting the 
stock in place, while in the fortnight which preceded 



The New York that Macy First Saw 2 1 

Christmas the store was open evenings — supposedly 
until ten o'clock, as a matter of fact, often until long 
after ttn y when the workers were well toward the point 
of exhaustion. Other conditions of their labor were 
slightly better. There were no seats in the aisles and 
conversation between the clerks was punishable by dis- 
charge. They might make their personal purchases 
only on Friday mornings, between eight and nine 
o'clock, and they received no discount whatsoever. In 
Mr. Macy's day the only discounts ever given were to 
the New York Juvenile Asylum in Thirteenth Street 
nearby, which was an institution peculiarly close to his 
heart. 

There were no lockers in the early days of the old 
store. In one of its upper floors several small rooms 
were set aside as a crude sort of cloak-room for the 
employees. A few nails around the walls sufficed for 
their outer wraps but there were never enough of these 
nails to go around. One of the clerks was chosen to 
come early and stay late in order to supervise these 
rooms. Inasmuch as there was neither glory nor 
remuneration in this task, it was not eagerly sought 
after. 

Nevertheless, here was the enlightened day at hand 
when women would and did work in stores — not alone 
in great numbers but in a great majority} and in many 
cases to the exclusion of men. It was one of the 
sweeping economic changes that the Civil War brought 
in its train. When the men must go to fight in the 
armies of the North, women must take their places — 
for only a little while it seemed up to that time. Yet 



22 The Romance of a Great Store 

so well did they do much of men's work, that their 
retention in many of their positions came as a very 
natural course. So while the decade that preceded the 
Civil War found few or no professions open to 
women — save those of teaching or of domestic employ- 
ment — the one which followed it found them coming 
in increasing numbers, into a steadily increasing num- 
ber and variety of endeavors. 

So it was then that the great war of the last century 
brought women behind the counters of the stores — 
Macy's was no exception to the invasion. They came 
to stay. And stay they have, to this very day, even 
though most of the New York stores still retain men 
to a considerable extent in some of their departments — 
notably those devoted to the sale of furniture, dress- 
goods and boots and shoes. For some varieties of 
stock the male clerk still is the most suitable and suc- 
cessful sort of salesman. 

In his store in Haverhill, Mr. Macy had adopted as 
his trade-mark a rooster bearing the motto in his beak, 
"While I live, Pll crow." For his nascent enterprise 
in New York, however, he adopted a different and, to 
him at least, a far more significant device, which to this 
day remains the symbol of the great enterprise which 
still bears his name. 

It was a star, a star of red, if you will. And back 
of that simple symbol rests a story: It seems that in 
the days of his youth when he sailed the northern seas 
in a whaling ship he had gradually acquired such pro- 
ficiency that he was made first mate and then master. 



The New York that Macy First Saw 23 

It was in the earlier capacity, however, and upon an 
occasion when he was given a trick at the wheel that 
Macy found himself in a thick fog oflF a New England 
port — one version of the story says Boston, the other 
New Bedford. To catch the familiar lights of the 
harbor gateways was out of the question. The cloud 
banks lay low against the shore. Overhead there was 
a rift or two, and in one of them, well ahead of the 
vessel's prow, there gleamed a brilliant star. 

For the young skipper this was literally a star of 
hope. His quick wit made it a guiding star. By it he 
steered his course and so successfully into the safety 
of the harbor that the star became for him thereafter 
the symbol of success. With the strange insistency 
that was inherent in the man, he was wont to say that 
the failure of his Boston store was due to the fact that 
he had not there adopted the star as his trade-mark. 
He made no such mistake in his New York enterprise. 
The star became the forefront of his business. And 
to this day it is a prominent feature of the main f agade 
of the great establishment which bears his name. 

Mr. Macy never lost his boyhood affection for the 
sea — the one thing inborn of his ancestral blood. It 
is related of him that one morning on his way to the 
store he found a small silver anchor lying on the side- 
walk, picked it up, placed it in his pocket and thereafter 
carried it until the day of his death, regarding it as a 
talisman of real value. There was one souvenir of his 
early connection of which he was greatly ashamed, 
however. As a boy he had permitted his shipmates to 
tattoo the backs of his hands. In later years he re- 



24 The Romance of a Great Store 

gretted this exceedingly, and developed a habit of 
talking to strangers with the palms of his hands held 
uppermost, so that they might not see the tattoo marks. 

From the very beginning Macy adopted certain fixed 
and definite policies for his business. These showed 
not alone the vision but the breadth and bigness of the 
man. For one of the most important of them he 
decided that in his business he would have cash trans- 
actions only. This applied both ways — to the purchase 
of his merchandise as well as to its retail sale. It is a 
bed-rock principle that has come down to today as a 
foundation of the business that he founded. It is 
perhaps the one rule of it, from which there is no devi- 
ation, at any time or under any circumstance. It is 
related that a full quarter of a century after Macy had 
first adopted this principle, one of the then partners of 
the concern was approached by a warm personal friend, 
a man of high financial standing, who said that he 
wished to make a rather elaborate purchase that morn- 
ing, but not having either cash or a check handy, asked 
for an exception to the no-credit rule. The partner 
shook his head, smiled, rather sadly, and said: 

"No, Mr. Blank, I cannot do that, even for you. 
But I can tell you what I can, and shall do." 

And so saying he reached for his own check-book, 
wrote out a personal voucher for two hundred dollars, 
stepped over to the cashier's office, had it cashed and 
presented the money, in crisp green bills to his friend. 

"You can repay me, at your convenience," was all 
that he said. 



The New York that Macy First Saw 25 

Convinced that trust — as he insisted upon calling 
credit — was a millstone upon the neck of the mer- 
chant — let alone a struggling man of thirty-five who 
previously had known failure — Macy insisted upon 
matching his purchases for any ensuing week close to 
his sales for the preceding one. He did all his own 
buying at first} and for a number of years thereafter 
he employed no professional buyers whatsoever. In 
this way he kept his margin closely in hand and at all 
times well within the range of safety. There was 
little of the spirit of the gambler in him. It would 
not have sat well with his Yankee blood. 

A second principle of the store in those early days 
which has come easily and naturally down to these — 
when it is accepted retailing principle everywhere — was 
the marking of the selling price upon each and every 
article. It seems odd to think today that the installing 
of such a fair and commonsense principle should once 
have been regarded as a stroke of daring initiative in 
merchandising. Yet the fact remains that in the days 
when Macy's was young, in the average store one bar- 
gained and bargained constantly. There was no single 
price set upon any article. Even when one went into 
as fine and showy a store as New York might boast one 
bartered. Caveat emptor, "Let the buyer beware," 
was seemingly the dominating retail motto of those 
days. 

But not in Mr. Macy's. The selling price went on 
every article displayed in the store in those days and in 
such plain and readable figures that any fairly educated 
person might clearly understand. This principle alone 



26 The Romance of a Great Store 

was one of the huge factors that went toward the early 
and immediate success of the enterprise. 

There was still another merchandising idea born of 
that great and fertile New England brain that needs 
to be set down at this time. For many years a notable 
feature of the advertising of the Macy store has been 
in the peculiar shading of its prices — at forty-nine 
cents or ninety-eight, or at $1.98 or $4.98 or $9.98 
rather than in the even multiples of dollars. A good 
many worldly-wise folk have jumped to the quick 
conclusion that this was due to a desire on the part of 
the store to make the selling price of any given article 
seem a little less than it really was. As a matter of 
fact it was due to nothing of the sort. With all of his 
respect for the honesty of his sales-force, the Yankee 
mind of R. H. Macy took few chances — even in that 
regard. He felt that in almost every transaction the 
money handed over by the customer would be in even 
silver coin or bills. To give back the change from an 
odd-figured selling-price the salesman or the sales- 
woman would be compelled to do business with the 
cashier and so to make a full record of the transaction. 
With the commodities in even dollars and their larger 
fractions the temptation to pocket the entire amount 
might be present. 

It required a good deal of logic, or long-distance 
reasoning, to figure out such a possibility and an almost 
certain safeguard against it. But that was Macy. His 
was not the day of cash-registers or other checking 
devices. The salesman and the saleswoman in a store 
was still apt to find himself or herself an object of 



The New York that Macy First Saw 27 

suspicion on the part of his or her employer. Business 
ethics were still in the making. A long road in them 
was still to be traversed. 

Mr. Macy's brother-in-law, Mr. Houghton, did not 
long remain in partnership with him, but retired to 
Boston, where he became senior partner of the house 
of Houghton & Dutton, which is still in existence. For 
a long number of years thereafter Macy conducted his 
business alone. Its steadily increasing growth, how- 
ever, the multiplication of its responsibilities and 
problems, and his own oncoming years finally caused 
him to admit to partnership on the first day of January, 
1877, two of his oldest and most valued employees, 
Abiel T. LaForge and Robert M. Valentine. It had 
long been rumored in the store that Miss GetchelPs 
years of faithful service were finally to be rewarded by 
a real partnership in it. But even in 1876, woman's 
place in modern business had not been firmly enough 
established to permit so radical a step by a business 
house of as large ramifications and responsibilities as 
Macy's had come to be. Yet the point was quickly 
overcome — and in a most unexpected way. Early in 
1 876 Miss Getchell became Mr. LaForge's wife. And 
so, in a most active and interested way, she gained at 
the end a real financial interest in the profitable busi- 
ness, in the upbuilding of which she had been so large 
a factor. 

Mr. LaForge had been a major in the Northern 
Army during the Civil War; in fact it was there that 
he had contracted the tuberculosis which was to cause 



28 The Romance of a Great Store 

his early demise. He had come into the store in the 
middle of the 'seventies as one of its first professional 
buyers — being a specialist in laces — and had developed 
real executive ability. He had great affection for 
things military. And when Mr. Macy told him of 
the uniformed attendants of his beloved Bon Marche, 
LaForge promptly proceeded to place the entire sales- 
force of Macy's in uniform. Neat uniforms they 
were, too: of a bluish-grey cadet cloth, and with stiff 
upstanding collars of a much darker blue upon the 
points of which were interwoven the familiar device 
of the bright red star. The Macy uniforms did not 
long remain, however. New York is not Paris. And 
in that day, when uniforms in general were looked 
upon as something quite foreign to the idea of the 
republic, American labor was particularly averse to 
them. 

His important partnership step taken, Mr. Macy 
began to lay down his responsibilities. Despite his 
great fame and vigorous constitution his health had 
begun to fail under the multiplicity of duties. Again 
he turned toward the sea. He embarked upon a long 
voyage to Europe} in which he was to combine both 
business and pleasure. From that voyage he never 
returned. His health sank rapidly and he died in 
Paris, on the twenty-ninth day of March, 1877. 

Two days later in New York, Mr. LaForge and 
Mr. Valentine formed a partnership, Mr. LaForge, 
although the younger of the two men, becoming the 
senior member of the firm. It was provided in the 



The New York that Macy First Saw 29 

co-partnership papers that the business should be con- 
tinued under the name of R. H. Macy & Co., until 
January 1, 18795 and thereafter under the new firm 
name of LaForge and Valentine. However, Mr. 
LaForge's death in 1878, followed a year later by that 
of his wife, prevented this scheme from being car- 
ried out. The question of changing the name of a 
well-established business — now come to be one of the 
great enterprises of the city of New York — was never 
again brought forward. The name of Macy had 
attained far too fine a trade value to be easily dropped, 
even if sentiment had not come into the reckoning. 
And sentiment still ruled the big retail house in lower 
Sixth Avenue, sentiment demanded that the name of 
one of New York's greatest merchant princes should be 
henceforth perpetuated in the business which he had so 
solidly founded. And so that name continues — in 
growing strength and prosperity. 



III. Fourteenth Street Days 

BY 1883 th e Macy store had rounded out its first 
quarter century of existence. The big, comfort- 
able, homely group of red brick buildings on Sixth 
Avenue from Thirteenth to Fourteenth Streets had 
come to be as much a real landmark of New York as 
the Grand Central Depot, Grace Church, Booth's 
Theater, the Metropolitan Opera House or the equally 
new Casino Theater in upper Broadway. Its founder 
had been dead for six years. But the business marched 
steadily on — growing steadily both in its scope and in 
its volume. It already was among the first, if not the 
very first in New York, in the variety and the magni- 
tude of its operations. It employed more than fifteen 
hundred men and women, a great growth since 18 70 
when an early payroll of the store had shown but one 
hundred on its employment list. 

Other stores had followed closely upon the heels of 
Macy's. Stewart's had moved up Broadway from 
Chambers Street to its wonderful square iron emporium 
between Ninth and Tenth Streets, where, after the 
death of the man who had established it, it enjoyed 
varying success for a long time until its final resusci- 
tation by that great Philadelphia merchant, John 
Wanamaker. Benjamin Altman had moved his store 
from its original location on Third Avenue to Sixth 

31 



^2 The Romance of a Great Store 

Avenue and Eighteenth Street, Koch was at Nineteenth 
Street, but Ehrich was still over on Eighth Avenue. 
None of these had been an important merchant in the 
beginning. But all of them, by 1883, were beginning 
to come into their own. The Sixth Avenue shopping 
district of the 'eighties and the 'nineties was being born. 
Mr. Macy's vision of more than twenty-five years 
years before was being abundantly justified. The new 
elevated railroad, which formed the backbone of Sixth 
Avenue and which had been completed about a decade 
before, all the way from South Ferry to One Hundred 
and Fifty-fifth Street, had proved a mighty factor in 
bringing shoppers into it. Mr. Macy in 1858 might 
not have foreseen the coming of this remarkable system 
of rapid transit — the first of its kind in any large city 
of the world. But he foresaw the coming of both 
Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. There is no 
doubt of that. He had a habit of reiterating his 
prophecy to all with whom he came in contact. 

The prophecy came to pass. Union Square no longer 
was surrounded by fine residences. Trade had invaded 
it, successfully. Tiffany's, Brentano's, The Century's 
fine publishing house had come to replace the homes of 
the old time New Yorkers. So, too, had Fourteenth 
Street been transformed. Delmonico's was still at 
one of its Fifth Avenue corners and back of it stood, 
and still stands, the Van Buren residence, a sort of Last 
of the Mohicans in brick and stone and timber and 
plaster. All the rest was business j high-grade busi- 
ness, if you please, and Macy's stood in the very heart 
of it. 



Fourteenth Street Days 33 

We saw, in a preceding chapter, how just before the 
passing of Mr. Macy he had taken into partnership 
Mr. LaForge and Mr. Valentine. Mr. LaForge, as 
we have just seen, lived hardly a year after Mr. Macy's 
death in Paris, and Mr. Valentine died less than a 
twelvemonth later — on February 15, 1879. Yet the 
force and impress of both of these men remained with 
the organization for a long time after their going. 
Miss Prunty, one of the older members of it, still 
remembers as one of her earliest recollections, seeing 
Mr. LaForge taking groups of the cash-girls out to 
supper during the racking holiday season. The little 
girls were duly grateful. Theirs was a drab existence, 
at the best j long hours and wearying ones. A type 
that has quite passed out of existence — in these days of 
automatic carriers — that old-time cash girl in the big 
store, with her red-checked gingham frock and her hair 
in pig-tails, which had a fashion of sticking straight out 
from her small head. Lunch in a small tin pail and a 
vast ambition, which led many and many a one of them 
into positions of real trust and responsibility. 

The most of them continued in the business of 
merchandising. They rose rapidly to be saleswomen, 
buyers and department managers — not alone in Macy's; 
but in the other great stores of the city. A Macy 
training became recognized as a business schooling of 
the greatest value. While at least one of these Macy 
graduates — Carrie DeMar — came to be an actress of 
nation-wide reputation, a comedienne of real merit. 

There were times when the existence of these smart, 
pert little girls grew less drab. One of them told me 



34 The Romance of a Great Store 

not so long ago of the entente cordiale which she had 

upbuilded between Mr. S and herself j nearly fifty 

years ago. 

"Mr. S was the only floorwalker that the store 

possessed in those days," said she. "Mr. Macy had 
been much impressed by his fine appearance and had 
created the post for him. On duty, he seemed a most 
solemn man. That was a part of his work. Behind 
it all he was most human, however 5 and sometimes on 
a hot day in midsummer he would begin to think of 
the cooling lager that flowed at The Grapevine, a few 
blocks down the avenue. That settled it. He would 
have to slip down there for five minutes. And slip 
down he did, while I stood guard at the Thirteenth 
Street door. I felt that Miss GetchelPs far-seeing 
eye was forever upon us or that Mr. Macy might turn 
up quite unexpectedly. 

"In return for all this, Mr. S would occasionally 

stand guard while I would slip over to John Huyler's 
bakery at Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth Street — 
sometimes to get one of his wonderful pies, and other 
times to buy the lovely new candies upon which he was 

beginning to experiment. We were great pals — S 

and I." 

Nowadays in the great department stores they order 
this entire business of collecting both cash and packages 
in a far better fashion. The merchant of today has 
a variety of wondrous mechanical contraptions — not 
only cash-carriers but cash-registers — which do the 
work they once did, much more rapidly and efficiently. 




THE FOURTEENTH STREET STORE OF OTHER DAYS 

By the early 'seventies Macy's had absorbed the entire southeastern 

corners of 14th Street and 6th Avenue, and had come to 

be a fixture of New York 



Fourteenth Street Days 35 

Even in those long ago days of the 'eighties the Macy 
store was beginning to install pneumatic tubes for 
carrying the money from the saleswomen at the 
counters to the high-set booths of the head cashiers, 
who seemingly had come to regard it as a mere com- 
modity, to be regarded in as fully impersonal a fashion 
as boots or shoes or sugar or broom-sticks. Put that 
down as progress for the 'eighties. 

The Macy store prided itself during that second 
generation, as now, upon its willingness to take up 
innovations, particularly when they showed themselves 
as possessing at least a degree of real worth. Mr. 
Macy, with his old fashioned prejudices against inno- 
vations of any sort, was gone. His successors took a 
radically different position in regard to them. Here 
was the electric-light — that brand-new thing which this 
young man Tom Edison over at Menlo Park was 
developing so rapidly. It was new. It had been well 
advertised} particularly well advertised for that day 
and generation. How it drew folk, to gaze admiringly 
upon its hissing brilliancy! Ergo! The Macy store 
must have an electric light. And so in the late autumn 
days of 1878 one of the very first arc lamps to be dis- 
played in New York was hung outside the Fourteenth 
Street front of the store and attracted many crowds. 
It was hardly less than a sensation. 

In the following autumn arc lamps were placed 
throughout all the retail selling portions of the store. 
Of course, they were not very dependable. Most folk 
those days thought that they would never so become. 
The store's real reliance was upon its gas-lighting; 



36 The Romance of a Great Store 

nice, reliable old gas. You could depend upon it. 
The new system was still erratic. So figured the mind 
of the 'eighties. 

Soon after the first electric lamps, the store's first 
telephone was installed. It, too, was a great novelty, 
and the customers of the establishment developed a 
habit of calling up their friends, just so that they could 
say they had used it. Eventually the convenience of 
the device became so apparent that folk stood in queues 
awaiting their turn to use it, and the telephone com- 
pany requested Macy's to take it out or at least to 
discontinue the practice of using it so freely. 

In that day there were no elevators nor for a con- 
siderable time thereafter. All the store's selling was 
at first, and for a long time thereafter, confined to its 
basement and to its main-floor. Gradually it began 
to encroach upon small portions of the second story. 
This afforded fairly generous selling space; for it 
must be remembered that the establishment not only 
filled the entire east side of Sixth Avenue from Thir- 
teenth Street to Fourteenth Street but extended back 
upon each of them for more than one hundred and 
fifty feet. Moreover it was beginning slowly to 
acquire disconnected buildings in the surrounding terri- 
tory; generally for the purpose of manufacturing cer- 
tain lines of merchandise — a practice which it has 
almost entirely discontinued in these later years. Then 
it still made certain things that it wished fashioned along 
the lines which its clientele still demanded. And even 
some of the upper floors of the older buildings that 
formed the main store group were partly given over 



Fourteenth Street Days 37 

to the making of clothing} of underwear j and men's 
shirts and collars in particular. 

It was after 1882, according to the memory of Mr. 
James E. Murphy, a salesman in the black silk depart- 
ment, who came to the store in that memorable year, 
that the first elevator was installed in the store. Up 
to that time, as we have just seen, there had been no 
necessity whatsoever for such a machine. But the 
steadily growing business of the store — there really 
seemed to be no way of holding Macy's back — made 
it necessary to use upper floors of the original building 
for retailing and more and more to crowd the manu- 
facturing and other departments into outside structures. 

So Macy's progressed. It kept its selling methods 
as well as its stock, not only abreast of the times, but 
a little ahead of them. Miss Fallon, who was in the 
shoe department of those days of the 'eighties, recalls 
that up to that time the shoes had been kept in large 
chiffoniers — the sizes "2^/2" to "3^" in one drawer, 
"4 " to "5" in the next, and so on. This meant that 
if a clerk was looking for a certain specified width — 
say "D" or "Double A" — she must rummage through 
the entire drawer until she came to a pair which had 
the required size neatly marked upon its lining. The 
mating of the shoes was accomplished by boring small 
awl holes in their backs and tying them neatly 
together. There was no repair shop in the shoe 
department of that day — merely an aged shoemaker 
who lived in a basement across Thirteenth Street and 
to whom shoes for repair were despatched almost as 
rapidly as they came into the store. 



38 The Romance of a Great Store 

These methods seem crude today. But, even in 
1883, they were in full keeping with the times. 
Merchandising was still in its swaddling clothes j the 
real science of salesmanship, a thing unknown. Yet 
men were groping through j and some of these men 
were in Macy's. You might take as such a man 
C. B. Webster, who came to the forefront of the busi- 
ness, soon after the deaths of Macy, LaForge and 
Valentine at the end of its second decade. In fact, his 
actual admission to the partnership preceded Mr. 
Valentine's death by a few months. A while later he 
married Mr. Valentine's widow. And when the last 
of the old partners was gone his was the steering hand 
upon the brisk and busy ship. 

To help him in his work he brought to his right 
hand Jerome B. Wheeler, who was admitted as a full 
partner April 1, 1879, and who so continued until his 
complete retirement from business, December 31, 1887. 
Mr. Webster continued with the house for a consider- 
ably longer time, maintaining his active partner- 
ship until 1896 when he sold his interest in the busi- 
ness to his partners. He continued, however, to retain 
his private office in the Macy store, coming north with 
it from Fourteenth Street to Thirty-fourth in 1902, 
and, until his death four or five years ago, staying close 
beside the enterprise in which he had been so large a 
creative factor. 

Webster and Wheeler are, t^en, the names most 
prominently connected with the second era of the 
store's growth and activity. They were bound to the 
founder of the house by blood-ties and by marriage. 



Fourteenth Street Days 39 

Mr. Webster's father — Josiah Locke Webster, a mer- 
chant of Providence, R. I. — and Mr. Macy were first 
cousins, their mothers having been sisters. The elder 
Webster and Rowland H. Macy were, in fact, the 
warmest of friends and so the proffer by the original 
proprietor of the store of an opening to his friend's 
son, came almost as a matter of course. Its educational 
value alone was enormous. Young Webster accepted. 
He joined the organization in 1876 and a year later was 
made one of its buyers. His worth quickly began to 
assert itself. And within another twelvemonth he had 
abandoned all idea of returning to his father's store in 
Providence and entered upon a partnership in the Macy 
business. 

Many of the older employees of the store still re- 
member him distinctly. He was a tall man, stately, 
conservative in speech and in manner — your typical 
successful man of business of that time and generation. 
Yet these very Macy people will tell you today that 
while his dignity awed, it did not repress. For with it 
went a kindliness of manner and of purpose. Nor was 
he — as some of them were then inclined to believe — 
devoid of any sense of humor. Mr. James Woods, 
who is assistant superintendent of delivery in the store 
today and who has been with it for forty-eight years, 
recalls many and many a battle royal with "C. B. W." 
as he still calls his old associate and chief, which they 
had together as they worked in the delivery rooms of 
the old Fourteenth Street store, hurling packages at one 
another and then following up with smart fisticuffs. 

"In those early days," adds George L. Hammond, 



40 The Romance of a Great Store 

who came to the store in 1886 and who is now in its 
woolen dress-goods department, "I found Mr. Webster 
a most kindly man, even though taciturn. For instance, 
one day Mr. Isidor Straus came up to the counter with 
a man whom he had met upon the floor. They stood 
talking together. Mr. Straus told the other gentleman 
that he had recently met a Mr. Cebalos, known at that 
time as the Cuban Sugar King, and that Mr. Cebalos 
had spoken to him of having met such a fine gentleman, 
an American, in France ; that this gentleman was evi- 
dently a man of education and large means and had 
said that he was in business in New York. Mr. Cebalos 
asked Mr. Straus if he had ever known his chance 
acquaintance in Paris — he was a Mr. Webster, 
Mr. C. B. Webster. To which Mr. Straus instantly 
replied: 'Of course I know him. He is the senior 
member of our firm/ Mr. Cebalos answered: 'What, 
the senior member of the firm of R. H. Macy & 
Co.? Why, he never told me that!'" 

So much for old-fashioned modesty and conservatism. 

The habit of reticence enclosed many of these older 
executives of Macy's. They were silent oft-times 
because they could not forget their vast responsibili- 
ties — even when they were away from the store. It is 
told of one of them that once in the middle of the 
performance in an uptown theater the thought flashed 
over him that he had neglected to close his safe — a 
duty which was never relegated to any subordinate. 
He arose at once from his seat and hurried down to the 
store, brought the night watchman to the doors and 



Fourteenth Street Days 41 

strode quickly to the private office: only to find the 
stout doors of its great strong-box firmly fastened. 
The idea that he had neglected his duty was a nervous 
obsession. His was not the training nor the mentality 
that ever neglected duty. 

Upon another occasion another partner (Mr. 
Wheeler) worried himself almost into a nervous break- 
down for fear that there would not be enough pennies 
for the cashier's cage during the forthcoming holiday 
season. Mr. Macy's odd-price plan was something 
of a drain upon the copper coin market of New 
York. And at this particular time, the local shortage 
being acute, Mr. Wheeler took a night train and hur- 
ried to Washington, to see the Secretary of the 
Treasury. Late the next evening he returned to New 
York and went to the house of Miss Abbie Golden, his 
head cashier, at midnight, just to tell her that he had 
succeeded in getting an order upon the director of the 
Philadelphia Mint for $10,000 in brand-new copper 
pennies. After which he went home, to a well-earned 
rest. 

Although Mr. Wheeler's connection with the store 
was for a much shorter period, he left upon it, at the 
end of its second era, much of the impress of his own 
personality. Like both Webster and Valentine, he also 
was indirectly related to R. H. Macy, having married 
Mr. Macy's niece, Miss Valentine. In appearance and 
in manner he was the direct antithesis of his partner, 
Webster. In the language of today he was a "mixer." 
Affable, direct, approachable, men liked him and came 



42 The Romance of a Great Store 

to him freely. The employees of the store poured 
their woes into his ears; and never in vain. He stood 
ready to help them, in every possible way. And they, 
knowing this, came frequently to him. 

Mr. Wheeler left the store and organization in 1887, 
selling his interest in the enterprise to Messrs. Isidor 
and Nathan Straus — of whom much more in a very 
few moments. He became tremendously interested 
in the development of Colorado and, upon going out 
there in 1888, built up a chain of stores, banks and 
mines. He still lives in the land of his adoption. 

One of Mr. Wheeler's keenest interests in the store 
was in its toy department. In this he followed closely 
Macy's own trend of thought and desire. For Macy's 
had already become, beyond a doubt, the toy-store of 
New York City. Starting eleven years after the 
foundation of the original store, this one department 
had so grown and expanded as annually to demand and 
receive the entire selling-space of the main floor. Each 
year, about the fifteenth of December, all other stocks 
would be cleared from shelves and counters, the willow- 
feathers, the fans and the fine laces would disappear 
from the little glass cases beside the main Fourteenth 
Street doors and in their places would come the toys — 
a goodly company in all, but strange — dolls, engines, 
blocks, mechanical devices, books. 

And then, to the doors of the great red-brick em- 
porium in Sixth Avenue would come New York Jr. 
He and she came afoot and in carriages, upon horse- 
cars of the surface railways and upon the steam-cars of 



Fourteenth Street Days 43 

the elevated, and before they entered stood for a 
moment at the great glass windows that completely 
surrounded the place. For there was spread to view 
a pantomime of the most enchanting sort. No theater 
might equal the annual Christmas window display of 
Macy's. No theater might even dream of creating 
such a vast and overwhelming spectacle. The Hippo- 
drome of today was still nearly thirty years into the 
future. 

The responsibilities of this vast undertaking alone 
were all but overwhelming. The twenty-fifth of 
December was barely passed, the store hardly cleaned 
of all the debris and confusion that it had brought, 
before plans for another Christmas were actively under 
way j Miss Bowyer, who specialized in the window dis- 
play, taking Mr. Wheeler up to the wax-figure experts 
of Eden Musee in Twenty-third Street to order the 
saints and sinners and famous folk generally who came 
to the window annually at the end of December. One 
of the present executives of Macy's can remember 
being privileged, as a small boy, to go behind the scenes 
of the window pantomime. There he saw it, not in 
its beauty of form and color and light, but as a be- 
wildering perplexity of mechanisms — belts and pulleys 
and levers and cams — an enterprise of no little 
magnitude. 

While Miss Bowyer and her assistants were busy 
laying the first of the plans for another window dis- 
play, Mr. Macy was off for Europe seeking a fresh 
supply of toys and novelties for New York Jr.'s own 
annual festival. Once in a while he touched a high 



44 The Romance of a Great Store 

level of novelty, such as the securing of the mechanical 
bird — which a moment ago we saw Margaret Getchell 
taking all to pieces and then placing the pieces together 
again, with all the celerity and precision of a Yankee 
mechanic. The mechanical bird appealed particularly 
to Mr. Macy's friend, Mr. Phineas T. Barnum. Mr. 
Barnum came often to the store in Fourteenth Street 
to gaze upon it and to listen to it. Perhaps he 
regretted that he had let so valuable an advertising 
feature slip out of the hands of his museum. 

For Mr. Macy's chief reason in importing a toy so 
rare and so expensive as to bring it far beyond the hands 
of any ordinary child was to create sensation — and so 
to gain advertising thereby. The merchant from out 
of New England was nothing if not a born advertiser. 
While his competitors were quite content with small 
and stilted announcements in the public prints as to the 
extent and variety of their wares, Macy splurged. He 
took "big space" — big at least for that day and gen- 
eration. And he did not hesitate to let printer's ink 
carry the fame of his emporium far and wide — a 
sound business principle which has prevailed in it from 
that day to this. 

But the toy season was never passed without its 
doubts and worries. An older employee of the store 
can still remember a most memorable year when it 
rained for a solid week after the toy season had opened 
and the bombazines and the muslins had been put away 
for the building-blocks and the hobby-horse. No one 
came to the store for seven long days. Mr. Macy was 
greatly distressed. He walked up one aisle and down 



Fourteenth Street Days 45 

another, stroking his long silky beard and saying that 
he was utterly ruined, and would have to close his store 
forthwith. But on the eighth day the sun came out, a 
season of fine crisp December weather arrived and the 
store was thronged with holiday shoppers. A fort- 
night's buying was accomplished in the passing of a 
single week and the situation completely saved. 



IV. The Coming of Isidor and 
Nathan Straus 

DURING the era in which Webster and Wheeler 
controlled it, the Macy store may be fairly said 
to have been in a state of hiatus. The driving force 
of its founders — Rowland Macy, LaForge and his wife 
and Valentine — was somewhat spent. And nothing 
had come to replace it. The store went ahead, of 
course — Webster and Wheeler were both hard workers 
and well-schooled — but keen observers noticed that it 
traveled quite largely upon the impetus and momentum 
which it had derived from its founders. New minds 
and hands to direct, new arms to strike and to strike 
strongly were needed and greatly needed. These new 
minds and hands and arms it was about to receive. But 
before we come to their consideration we shall turn 
back the calendar — for nearly forty years. 

It was in 1848 that the German Revolution drove 
out from the Fatherland and into other countries great 
numbers of men and women. The United States 
received its fair share of these j the most of them young 
men, impetuous, enterprising, idealistic. The late 
Carl Schurz was a fair representative of this type. 
About him were grouped in turn a small group of men, 
who might be regarded fairly as the most energetic and 

47 



48 The Romance of a Great Store 

successful of the expatriates. In this group one of the 
most distinctive was one Lazarus Straus, who had been 
a sizable farmer in the Rhine Palatinate — at that time 
under the French flag — and who brought with him his 
three small sons, Isidor, Nathan and Oscar. In their 
veins was an admixture of French and German blood. 
In 19 19 when Oscar S. Straus attended the Paris 
Peace Conference as the Chairman of the League to 
Enforce Peace, a dinner was given to him in Paris at 
which Leon Bourgeois, the former Premier of France 
and the present Chairman of the Council of the League 
of Nations, presided. In his address he referred to the 
fact that the father of the guest of honor, Oscar S. 
Straus, was born a French subject. 

To America, then, came Lazarus Straus and later his 
little family, as many and many an immigrant has 
come, before and since — seeking his fortune and asking 
no odds save a fair opportunity and a freedom from 
persecution. They landed in Philadelphia, where a 
little inquiry, among old friends who had come to the 
United States a few years before, developed the fact 
that the best business opportunities of the moment 
seemed to center in the South. Oglethorpe, Ga., was 
regarded by them as a particularly good town. 
With this fact established, Lazarus Straus started 
South and did not end his travels until he had reached 
Georgia, then popularly regarded as its "empire state." 
Through Georgia he found his way slowly, a small 
stock of goods with him and selling as he went in order 
to make his meagre living expenses, until he was come 



The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus 49 

to Talbot County, which proudly announced itself as 
"the empire county of the empire state." 

It was in court-week that Lazarus Straus first 
marched into Talboton, its shire-town, and took a good 
long look at his surroundings. At first glance he liked 
it. It was brisk and busyj if you have been in an old- 
fashioned county-seat in court-week you will quickly 
recall what a lot of enterprise and bustle that annual or 
semi-annual event arouses. But that was not all. 
Talboton did not have the slovenly look of so many of 
the small Southern towns of that period. It was trim 
and neat j its houses and lawns and flower-pots alike 
were well-kept. It must have brought back to the 
lonely heart of the man from the Palatinate the neat 
small towns of his Fatherland. Moreover it pos- 
sessed an excellent school system. 

No longer would Lazarus Straus tramp across the 
land. He had accumulated enough to start his store 
on a moderate basis at least. For three or four days 
he skirmished about the town looking for a location, 
until he found a tailor who was willing to rent one-half 
of his store to him. Even upon a yearly basis the 
rental of his part of the shop would cost less than the 
annual license which the state of Georgia required 
itinerants to buy. The opportunity was opened. A 
resident of Talboton he became. There in its friend- 
liness and culture he brought his family and set up his 
little home. 

The business prospered so rapidly that within a few 
weeks he was obliged to seek larger quarters. A whole 
store he found this time, so roomy that he needs must 



SO The Romance of a Great Store 

go back again to Philadelphia to find sufficient stock to 
fill its shelves. His original stock he had purchased 
at Oglethorpe, which, although much larger than 
Talboton, had apparently not appealed to him the half 
as much. 

"Aren't you going to buy your new stock at Ogle- 
thorpe?" his fellow merchants of the little county-seat 
asked him. He shook his head. And they shook 
theirs. 

"The merchants of Oglethorpe will not like it if you 
pass them by and go on to Philadelphia." 

But the founder of the house of Straus in America 
kept his own counsel and followed his own good judg- 
ment. He went to Philadelphia, found his friends 
again, who had known his family in the Rhine, either 
personally or by reputation, obtained their credit assist- 
ance and with it bought and carried south such wares as 
Talbot County had not before known, with the result 
that the business, now fairly launched, was carried to 
new reaches of success. 

If there had been no Civil War it is entirely probable 
that this record would never have been written — that 
there would be in 1922 no Macy store in New York to 
come into printed history. It was in fact that great 
conflict that brought disaster to so many hundreds and 
thousands of businesses — big and little — that ended the 
career of L. Straus of Talboton, Georgia, U. S. A. But 
not at first. At first, you will recall, the South marched 
quite gaily into the conflict. She was rich, prosperous, 
well-populated. Impending conflict looked like little 



The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus 51 

else than a great adventure. Lazarus Straus' oldest 
son, Isidor, who had been destined for military train- 
ing — having already been entered at the Southern 
Military College, at Collingsworth, to prepare for 
West Point — could not restrain himself as he helped 
organize a company of half -grown boys in the village, 
of which he was immediately elected first-lieutenant. 
This company asked the Governor of Georgia for arms, 
but was refused. 

"There are not enough guns for the men, let alone 
the boys," came the words from the ancient capitol at 
Macon. 

At that time Lazarus Straus' partner, the man who 
was his right hand and aid, did succeed in getting a gun 
and getting into the war. This made a natural open- 
ing for Isidor in the store, in which he progressed 
rapidly, for a full eighteen months. Then, the partner 
having been invalided home from the front, the boy 
was free to engage once again in the service of the 
newly created nation to which the family, as well as all 
their friends roundabout them, had already given their 
fealty. He went to enter himself in the Georgia Mili- 

j tary Academy, at Marietta — a few miles north of the 

1 growing young railroad town of Atlanta. 

Then came one of those slight incidents, seemingly 
trifling at the moment of the occurrence but sometimes 
changing the entire trend of men and their affairs. A 
young man, already a student at the Academy, volun- 
teered to introduce Isidor Straus to his future fellow 
students. When they were come to one of the dormi- 

i tories and at the door of a living-room, the kindly 



52 The Romance of a Great Store 

young man swung the door open and bade Isidor enter. 
He entered, a pail of water, nicely balanced atop the 
door, tumbled and its contents were poured over the 
novitiate's head and shoulders. 

That single hazing trick disgusted Isidor Straus 
immeasurably. He was a serious-minded young man, 
who realized that Georgia at that moment was passing 
through a particularly serious crisis in her affairs. For 
such tomfoolery and at such a time he had no use what- 
soever. It settled his mind. He did not enter the 
school, but returned to his hotel, and on the follow- 
ing day, going to a nearby mill, bought a stock of grain 
and began merchandising it, on his own behalf. 

This was not to last long, however. The struggling 
Confederacy needed his services and needed them 
badly. The fame of the Straus family — its great in- 
genuity and ability — had long since passed outside of 
the boundaries of Talbot County. Tongues wagged 
and said that Isidor had inherited all of his father's 
vision and acumen. That settled it. Lloyd G. 
Bowers, a prominent Georgian, was being designated to 
head a mission to Europe, to sell, if he could, both 
Confederate bonds and cotton acceptances. He chose 
for his secretary and assistant Isidor Straus. And early 
in 1863 the two men embarked upon a small ship, 
The May, in Charleston harbor, which, in the course 
of a single evening, successfully performed the difficult 
task of running the blockade that guarded that port. 
Two days later they were at Nassau in the Bahamas, 
from which the voyage to England was a secondary 
and fairly easy matter. 



The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus 53 

Despite the seeming hopelessness of his task — for 
already the tide had turned and was flowing against the 
Confederacy — Isidor Straus had a remarkable degree 
of success in England. In his later years he was fond 
of relating how, in 1890, while sojourning abroad, in 
turning over a telephone book in London he came to a 
name which brought back memories and, acting upon 
impulse, called that name to the telephone. 

"Can you tell me the price of Confederate bonds this 
morning ?" he asked quietly. 

"Isidor Straus !" came the astonished reply. A few 
hours later a real reunion was in progress. 

Long before Appomattox came the utter failure of 
the once brisk little store at Talboton. In fact, the 
family had left that small village — very nearly in 
Sherman's path — and had moved to Columbus. There 
it sat in debt and desperation, as the Confederacy sank 
to its inevitable death. The only ray of hope in its 
existence was the vague possibility of success in Isidor's 
trip to England. And when the son came back to 
New York, soon after Lee's surrender, Lazarus Straus 
went north to meet him. Isidor had prospered. Cot- 
ton acceptances were not the bonds of a defunct young 
nation. England needed cotton — the mills of Man- 
chester had stood idle for weeks and months at a time. 
Isidor Straus knew when and how to sell his cotton- 
bills — he was, in every sense of the word, a born 
merchant. He sold shrewdly, lived frugally, and 
returned to the United States with $12,000 in gold 
upon his person! 



54 The Romance of a Great Store 

This was the nugget upon which a new family begin- 
ning was made. There was to be no more South for 
the family of Straus. Business opportunity down 
there was dead — for a quarter of a century at the very 
least. But business opportunity in New York had 
never seemed as great as in the flush days of success 
and prosperity which followed the ending of the war. 
Lazarus Straus had brought north in his carpet-bag 
more cotton acceptances. But he had not been as for- 
tunate as his son in having the time and the place to 
sell them at best advantage. Cotton within a few 
months had fallen in the United States to but one-half 
of its price of the preceding autumn. 

It was fortunate, indeed, that Isidor Straus had his 
little bag of golden coin at that moment. It was that 
gold that enabled him to start with his father, under 
the name of L. Straus & Son, a rather humble crockery 
business in a top-floor loft at 161 Chambers Street. 
The specie went toward the establishment of the new 
business. The debts of the old were already being 
paid. Lazarus Straus was, I believe, one of the few 
Southern merchants who paid their debts in the North 
in full, and thereby secured a great personal credit. 
This last came without great difficulty — in after years 
it was to be said that Isidor Straus could raise more 
money upon his word alone than any other man in 
New York. It was Mr. Bliss — of Bliss & Co., long time 
wholesalers of the city and predecessors of the well- 
known Tofft, Weller & Co. — who, upon being applied 
to by Isidor Straus for financial assistance, asked what 
he and his father proposed to do to regain their fortune. 



The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus 55 

"Start in the china business," was the simple reply. 

"You have your courage," was Mr. Bliss's reply, 
"your father at the age of fifty-seven — and yourself — 
to embark upon a brand new business, in which neither 
of you have had the slightest experience." 

But such was the old New Yorker's faith in these 
men that he sold them the huge bill of merchandise, 
some $45,000, under which they embarked their busi- 
ness, saying that they could pay him, one-third in cash, 
and that he could well afford to wait two or even three 
years for the balance. 

He did not have to wait that long. Again the 
business — in the hands of hard-working born mer- 
chandisers — prospered, from the very instant of its 
beginning. It opened for selling and made its first 
sale, June 1, 1866. And again within a few short 
weeks, L. Straus & Son was demanding more room for 
expansion, and getting it — this time in the form of a 
ground floor and basement of that same building in 
Chambers Street. It was still both new and young, 
however. Its hired employees were but three: a 
packer, his helper and a selector, or stock-room man. 
Isidor Straus ran all the details of the store, opening it 
and closing it each day and acting as its book-keeper, 
until a year later when Nathan Straus came into the 
organization, becoming its first salesman. The busi- 
ness was getting ahead. Despite the difficulties and 
the humbleness of its start it had sold more than 
$60,000 worth of goods, in the first twelve months of 
its existence. 

"That they were hard months, I could not deny," 



$6 The Romance of a Great Store 

said Isidor Straus of them in after years. "We had 
bought our house in West Forty-ninth Street, so that 
we might have our family life together, just as we had 
had in those pleasant Georgia days of before the war. 
More than once we contemplated selling the house so 
that we might put the proceeds in the business, but 
always at the last moment we were able to avoid that 
great catastrophe." 

And soon the necessity of ever selling the house was 
past. Prosperity multiplied. The firm went beyond 
selling the ordinary grades of crockery, which America 
had only known up to that time — serviceable stuff, but 
thick and clumsy and heavy — and began the importa- 
tion upon a huge and increasing scale, of the more deli- 
cate and beautiful porcelains of Europe. It added 
manufacturing to its importations. It became an 
authority upon fine China. And Nathan Straus, its 
salesman, had to scurry to keep apace with its growth — 
already be was becoming known as a super-salesman. 
He extended his territory to the West and in 1869 — 
the year of the completion of the Union Pacific and 
Central Pacific Railroads — was going to the West Coast 
in search for customers. Two years later — a few weeks 
after the great fire — he opened a selling-office for the 
firm in Chicago. 

"Yet I do not like this travel," he said a little later 
to his brother. "Not only is it very hard, physically, 
but I find that as soon as I get away from it the orders 
fall off. We have to work too hard for the volume of 
profit in hand." 

With this idea firmly in his mind he began a more 



The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus 57 

intensive cultivation of the fields closer at hand. Some 
of the establishments of New York that later were to 
develop already were in their beginnings. There was 
that smart New Englander up at Fourteenth Street and 
Sixth Avenue — that man Macy, whose store already 
was beginning to be the talk of the town. Nathan 
Straus thought that he would go up and see Rowland 
H. Macy. And one of the oldest employees of the 
store still recalls seeing him come into the place, for 
the first time in his life, on a Saint Patrick's Day — it 
probably was March 17, 1874 — with a paper package 
under his arm which contained a couple of fine porcelain 
plates. 

Macy was a good prospect. For one thing, remem- 
ber that he bought as well as sold for cash, and for cash 
alone. Credit played little or no part in his fortunes. 
New York had refused him credit when first he came to 
her and he had learned to do without it. Macy was 
not alone a good prospect from that point of view but 
he was, as we have already seen — a man constantly 
seeking novelty. Straus and his porcelain plates inter- 
ested him immensely. And the upshot of that first 
call was the assignment of a space in the basement of 
the store, about twenty-five by one hundred feet in all, 
which L. Straus & Sons rented and owned. That was 
not a common custom at that time, although a little 
later it became a very popular one, and, I think, pre- 
vails to a slight extent even in these days. The Straus 
experiment in the basement of the Macy store paved 
the way. It having succeeded remarkably well within 
a short time after its inception, other and similar 



58 The Romance of a Great Store 

departments were established elsewhere; at R. H. 
White's, in Boston, at John Wanamaker's, in Phila- 
delphia, at Wechsler & Abraham's, in Brooklyn, and in 
a Chicago store which long since passed from existence. 

Here, after all, was perhaps the real incarnation of 
the department-store in America, as we know it today, 
and as it is distinguished from the dry-goods store of 
other days which, as natural auxiliaries and corrolaries 
to its business, had long since added to the mere selling 
of dress-goods that of hosiery, boots and shoes, under- 
clothing, ribbons, hats and other finesse, both of 
women's and of men's apparel. We have seen long 
since the versatile Miss Getchell adding groceries to 
Macy's departments — and then for a time withdrawing 
them — afterwards toys, which were never withdrawn. 
Even then the department-store idea was gradually 
being born; with the establishment of the Straus 
crockery store in the basement of the downtown Macy's 
it came into the fine flower of its youth. 

For fourteen years this arrangement prospered and 
progressed — grew greatly in public favor. The store, 
as we have seen, had passed out of the hands of its orig- 
inal proprietors. Death had claimed four of them — 
within a short period of barely thirty months. And a 
new generation had come in. But within a decade of 
the time that he had entered the organization, one of the 
partners of this second generation, Mr. Wheeler, was 
considering leaving it. Colorado had fascinated him. 
To Colorado he must go. To Colorado he did go. 
He sold his interest to his partner, Mr. Webster, who 



The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus 59 

in turn sold it to Isidor and Nathan Straus. The 
crockery counter had absorbed the great store which it 
had entered so humbly but fourteen years before, as a 
mere tenant of one of its tiny corners. 

Now were there indeed real guiding hands upon the 
enterprise. Force and energy and ability had come to 
direct the fortunes of what was already probably the 
largest merchandising establishment within the entire 
land. A family which had not known failure, save as 
a spur to repeated efforts, had come into control. It 
had everything to gain by the venture and it did not 
propose to lose. 

The actual consolidation and transfer of interests 
took place on January 1, 1888. Mr. Webster, as has 
already been recorded, retained his actual interest in 
the store until 1896, w T hen he retired, disposing of it 
to his partners but maintaining an office in their build- 
ing until his death, in 19 16. He gave way deferen- 
tially, however, to the Straus energy and Straus 
experience. The effects of these were visible from the 
beginning. 

The personality of the Straus family had, of course, 
become well identified with the store long before the 
accomplishment of its reorganization. The crockery de- 
partment had grown to one of its really huge features. 
In it Nathan Straus was perhaps more often seen than 
Isidor, who always was of a quieter and more retiring 
nature. Many of the employees remember how Nathan 
Straus came to the store on the morning of the first 
day of the blizzard of March, 1888. By some strange 
fatality that morning had been appointed weeks in 



60 The Romance of a Great Store 

advance as the store's annual Spring Millinery Open- 
ing — a vernal festival of more than passing interest to 
a considerable proportion of New York's population. 
The actual morning found the city far more interested 
in getting its milk and bread than its straw-hats for 
oncoming summer. A large number of the employees 
of the millinery department who had remained in the 
store late the preceding evening in order to complete 
the preparations of the great event were compelled to 
remain there the entire night, being both fed and 
housed by the firm. They were there when Nathan 
Straus arrived. Even the elevated railroad which he 
and many others had looked upon as a reliance after 
the complete and early collapse of the surface lines, 
had finally broken under the unparalleled fierceness of 
the storm. And Nathan Straus, after arriving on a 
train within a comparatively few blocks of the store, 
was long delayed there, between the stations, and 
finally came to the street on a ladder and made his way 
to the store through the very teeth of the gale. 

That was dramatic. It was not so dramatic when, 
time and time again, both he and his brother, Isidor, 
would insist upon bundling themselves in all sorts of 
disagreeable weather and going downtown or up, 
because an old employee of L. Straus & Son was to be 
buried or a new one of the retail store was ill. The 
fidelity and the inherent affection of these men was 
marked more than once by those who work with and 
for them. And what it gave to the store in esfrit-de- 
corps — in the thing which we have very recently come 
to know as morale — cannot easily be estimated. 






The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus 61 

In this, its fourth decade, many distinguished New- 
Yorkers still came to the store. One remembers a 
President of the United States who came often and who 
brought his Secretary of the Treasury with him more 
than once. The President was Grover Cleveland and 
his Secretary of the Treasury was John G. Carlisle and 
they were both intimate friends of the brothers Straus. 
And there came often among customers and friends 
the late Russell Sage. Macy's sold an unlaundered 
shirt, linen bosom and cuffs with white cotton back and 
at a fixed price of sixty-eight cents, which seemed to 
have a vast appeal to Mr. Sage.' Yet he never pur- 
chased many at a time — never more than two or three. 
He was a financier and did not believe in tying up 
unnecessary capital. 

To the store from time to time came Mrs. Paran 
Stevens. And one day while waiting for Mr. Hibbon 
of the housef urnishing department, she told Miss Julia 
Neville, one of the women on the floor there, that while 
upon an extended trip abroad she had written instruc- 
tions to her agents in this country to sell certain of her 
personal belongings and that upon her return she was 
astounded to find that a glass toilet set, which she had 
purchased at Macy's for but ninety-nine cents and from 
which the price-mark had long since been removed had 
been sold by them at auction for one hundred dollars! 



V. The Store Treks Uptown 

WITH the beginning of a new century New York 
was once again in turmoil. Always a restless 
city, the year 1900 found her suffering severe growing 
pains. Manhattan Island seemingly was not large 
enough for the city that demanded elbow room upon 
it. Moreover, a distinct factor in the growth of New 
York was not only planned but under construction. 
Its final completion — in 1904 — was already being 
anticipated. I am referring to the subway. After a 
quarter of a century of talk and even one or two rather 
futile actual experiments, a real rapid-transit railroad 
up and down the backbone of Manhattan finally was 
under way. As originally planned it extended from 
the City Hall up Lafayette Street and Fourth Avenue 
to the Grand Central Station, at which point it turned 
an abrupt right angle and proceeded through Forty- 
second Street to Times Square, where it again turned 

i abruptly — north this time — into Broadway, which it 
followed almost to the city line; first to the Harlem 
River at Kingsbridge and eventually to its present 

1 terminus at Van Cortlandt Park. A branch line, 
thrusting itself toward the east from Ninety-sixth 
Street, emerged upon an elevated structure which it 
followed to the Bronx Park and Zoological Gardens. 

63 



64 The Romance of a Great Store 

Before this original section of the subway was com- 
pleted it already was in process of extension toward 
the south j from the City Hall to and under the South 
Ferry to Brooklyn which it reached in two successive 
leaps j the first to the Borough Hall (the old Brooklyn 
City Hall) and the second to the Atlantic Avenue 
station of the Long Island Railroad, which has 
remained its terminus until within the past twelve- 
month. More recently the original subway system of 
Greater New York has been so changed and enlarged 
as to all but lose sight of the original plan. Instead 
of a single main-stem up the backbone of New York, 
there are now two parallel trunks — the one on the east 
side of the town and the other upon the west — and the 
now isolated link of the original main line in Forty- 
second Street has become a shuttle service from the 
Grand Central Station to Times Square and the cross- 
bar of the letter "H" which forms the rough plan of 
the entire system. Still other underground railroads 
have come to supplement the vast task of this original 
system. It is more than a decade since the energy of 
William G. McAdoo completed the Hudson River 
Tubes, which an earlier generation had had the vision 
but not the ability to build, and brought their upper 
stem through and under Sixth Avenue and to a terminal 
at Herald Square} while even more recently the 
huge and far-reaching Brooklyn Rapid Transit system 
has appropriated Broadway, Manhattan, for a vastly 
elongated terminal; which takes the concrete form of 
a four-tracked underground railroad beneath that 
world-famed street all the way from the City Hall to 



The Store Treks Uptown 65 

Times Square and above that point through Seventh 
A venue to Fifty-ninth Street and Central Park; and 
thence across the Queensborough Bridge. 

It was the original subway, however, that brought 
the great real-estate upheaval to New York. Many 
years before it was completed New York had been 
moving steadily uptown — shrewd observers used to 
say at the rate of ten of the short city blocks each ten 
years. But its progress had been slow and dignified — 
relatively at least. With the coming of the new sub- 
way, dignity in this movement was thrown to the four 
winds. A mad rush uptown. Wholesale firms 
abandoned the structures that had housed them for 
years in the business districts south of Fourteenth 
Street and began to look for newer and larger quarters 
north of that important cross-town thoroughfare. The 
retail world of New York was far slower to be influ- 
enced by the change. For one thing, its investment in 
permanent structures was relatively much higher than 
that of the wholesale. Folk who came from afar and 
who marveled at the elegance of Sixth Avenue as a 
shopping street, all the way from Thirteenth to 
Twenty-third, could hardly have conceived that within 
two decades it would become dusty, forlorn, practically 
deserted. No matter that the hotel life of New York 
had ascended well to the north of Twenty-third, that 
the theaters were beginning to gather even north of 
Thirty-fourth, that a few small, smart, exclusive shops 
were showing signs of joining the trek — there remained 
the realty investment in the department stores at Sixth 
Avenue. It seemed incredible that such a huge invest- 



66 The Romance of a Great Store 

ment should be thrown to the winds. Yet this was the 
very thing that actually was accomplished. 

Macy's stood to lose less in an economic sense from 
a move uptown than any of its competitors. True it 
was that the firm had builded for its own account in 
Fourteenth Street, just east of the original store, a very 
handsome, steel-constructed, stone-fronted building 
which it had thrown into the older building in order to 
relieve the pressure upon it. Across the way, on the 
north side of Fourteenth Street, it had put up at an 
even earlier date a substantial seven-story store for the 
use of its greatly expanded furniture department. 
The original store, however, stood upon leased land — 
the property of the Rhinelander Estate. One of the 
earliest of the stories about Mr. Macy concerns the 
coming of George Rogers, the agent of the estate and 
his warm personal friend as well, each Monday morn- 
ing} not for his rent} but to cash a check for thirty 
dollars. It was not hard to guess at his compensation. 

The increase in land rentals in the neighborhood and 
the fact that the firm could hardly hope ever to acquire 
an actual title to the valuable site of its main store, 
coupled with the steadily increasing trek uptown, 
caused the Macy management to consider seriously 
whether it would join in the northward movement. 
It soon would have to do one thing or the other. The 
old store was growing very old and very overcrowded. 
Moreover, it was, at the best, a makeshift, a jumbling 
together of one separate store after another in order 
to accommodate a business which forever refused to 
stay put. Under such conditions a scientific or efficient 






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The Store Treks Uptown 67 

planning of the building had been quite out of the 
question. The real wonder was that the business had 
been conducted so well, against such a handicap. 

The move once considered was quickly determined 
upon. No other course seemingly would have been 
possible. To have erected a new store building upon 
a leasehold in a quarter of the town which presently 
might begin to slide backward — would have been a 
precarious experiment, to put it mildly. It must go 
uptown. The only question that really confronted 
the store was just where to go uptown. A site large 
enough for a huge department-store is not usually 
acquired overnight. Moreover, the necessity for 
secrecy in so important a step was obvious — the dangers 
of the mere suggestion of its becoming known were 
multifold. 

With these things clearly understood, the search for 
a new site was begun. Various ones were considered, 
but were finally rejected. For a time the firm con- 
sidered buying the famous old Gilsey House and the 
property immediately adjoining it. Another site 
which appealed to it even more was the former site of 
the Broadway Tabernacle on the east side of Broadway, 
just north of Thirty-fourth Street — the site of the 
present Marbridge Building. The commanding pres- 
cience of this corner forced itself upon them. Sixth 
Avenue, an artery street north and south, threaded by 
electric surface-cars and the elevated railroad — the 
McAdoo Tubes had not then come into even a paper 
being — was crossed at acute angles by an even more 



68 The Romance of a Great Store 

important street — New York's incomparable Broad- 
way — and at right angles by Thirty-fourth Street, 
which even then was giving promise of its coming im- 
portance. The original planners of the uptown city 
of New York made many serious mistakes in their far- 
seeing scheme. But they made no mistake when they 
took each half mile or so and made one of their cross 
streets into a thoroughfare as bold and as wide as one 
of their north and south avenues. Thirty-fourth was 
one of the streets picked out for such importance. And 
from the beginning it realized the judgment of its 
planners. The completion of the huge Waldorf- 
Astoria Hotel in 1897 (the earlier or Waldorf side in 
Thifty-third Street had been finished in 1893) had 
fixed the importance of the street. Thirteen years 
later the opening of the Pennsylvania Station was to 
confirm it — for all time. 

In 1900 the vast plan of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
for the invasion of Manhattan was as yet unknown. 
Even in the main offices of that railroad, in Broad 
Street Station, Philadelphia, it still was most inchoate 
and fragmentary. In the language of the moment, 
Macy's was "acting on its own." The store was using 
its own powers of foreseeing — and using them very 
well indeed. 

But the site on the east side of Herald Square was 
not to be. In free titles it was not nearly large enough. 
But the west side of the square! There was a possi- 
bility. If the new store could be builded there it not 
only could possess an actual Broadway frontage but it 
Would be set so far back from the elevated railroad as 



The Store Treks U ft own 69 

not to be bothered by its noise or smoke, even in the 
slightest degree. As a matter of fact the last already 
was disappearing. The electric third-rail system was 
being installed everywhere upon the Manhattan system, 
and the pertinacious, puffy little locomotives, which so 
long had been a feature of New York town, were 
doomed to an early disappearance. 

The west side of Herald Square appealed to Macy's. 
Long and exacting searches into its land-titles were 
made. Some three hundred feet back of Broadway 
the magnificent new theater of Koster & BiaPs, extend- 
ing all the way from Thirty-fourth Street to Thirty- 
fifth, backed up a tract which in the main was occupied 
by comparatively low buildings, the most of them 
brown-stone residences, which already were in the 
course of transformation into small business places. 
This tract seemingly was quite large enough for the 
new Macy's — with the possible exception, perhaps, of 
its engine-room and mechanical departments. The 
firm decided to take it, and with a policy of magnificent 
secrecy began negotiations for its lease. In order to 
accommodate the engine and machinery rooms it pur- 
chased a tract upon the north side of Thirty-fifth Street 
just back of the former Herald Square Theater. On 
this last land stood two of New York's most notorious 
resorts of twenty years ago — the Pekin and the Tivoli. 
The development of the Macy plan drove them out of 
the street and, for the time being at least, out of 
business. 

The Macy plan did not go through to a final 



70 The Romance of a Great Store 

culmination, however, quite as it had been laid out. 
So huge a scheme and one involving so many separate 
real-estate transactions is hard to keep a secret for any 
great length of time. Gradually the news of Macy's 
contemplated step became public property. It caused 
public astonishment and public acclaim. For, remem- 
ber, if you will, that in 1900, none of the department 
stores had moved uptown north of Twenty-third Street. 
Bloomingdale's was at Third Avenue and Fifty-ninth 
and Sixtieth Streets, but it was a gradual upgrowth, 
from a modest beginning upon that original important 
corner. The last move had been in 1862, when 
A. T. Stewart had moved his store from Chambers 
Street north to Ninth. The cost of the lot and struc- 
ture to Mr. Stewart was $2,750,000 — a stupendous 
figure in that day. 

The publicity surrounding the proposed move of 
Macy's found the Straus family still without one of the 
plots necessary to the complete acquisition of all the 
land in the block east of Koster & BiaPs. It was the 
small but important northwest corner of Broadway and 
Thirty-fourth Street — a mere thirty by fifty feet, a 
remnant of an ancient farm whose zig-zag boundaries 
antedated the coming of the city plan and showed a 
seeming fine contempt for it. This tiny parcel was the 
property of an old-time New Yorker, the Rev. Duane 
Pell. Dr. Pell was on an extended trip in Europe in 
1 90 1, when Macy's began the active acquisition of its 
new store-site. It was given to understand that his 
asking price for the small corner was $250,000; an 



The Store Treks Uptown 71 

astonishing figure for such a tiny bit of land, even 
today, but Dr. Pell felt that he held the key to the 
entire important Herald Square corner and that he was 
justified in asking any price for it that he saw fit to ask. 
While the plot was so small as to afford very little 
to it in the way of actual floor space the Macy manage- 
ment felt that it was so essential to the appearance of 
the store that it agreed to come to Dr. PelPs price — 
and so cabled him; in Spain. Word came back that he 
was about to embark for New York and that he would 
take up the entire matter immediately upon his arrival. 

A few years before the Macy organization planned 
to be the initial department-store to move uptown, 
Henry Siegel, a Chicago merchant, who had achieved 
a somewhat spectacular and ephemeral success in that 
city, decided upon the invasion of New York. He 
came to Manhattan and in Sixth Avenue, midway 
between Fourteenth and Twenty-third Streets, erected 
a store which for a time duplicated the success of its 
Chicago predecessor. The proposed move of the Macy 
store apparently filled him with consternation. With 
a good deal of prophetic vision he foresaw that other 
Sixth Avenue stores would go uptown in its wake. His 
own investment in that street was too great and too 
recent to be jeopardized. 

Siegel hit upon the idea of stepping* into the old site 
and building at Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue as 
soon as the Macy organization should vacate. But to 
desire that valuable location and to secure it were two 
vastly different things. The Strauses were not asleep 



72 The Romance of a Great Store 

to the possibility of some one attempting such a move. 
It would not be the first time in merchandising history. 
They arranged carefully therefore that their old corner 
at Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue should remain 
entirely empty for two years after they had moved 
out from it. The moral and educational effect of such 
a hiatus was not to be underestimated. 

In the meantime the Chicago man was busy on his 
own behalf. Through his realty agents he had quickly 
discovered Dr. Duane PelPs ownership of the corner 
point of the new Macy plot. He also found that the 
dominie was already on his return to the United States. 
He entrusted to a faithful representative the task of 
meeting him at the steamer-pier. The agent was there, 
bright and early, to meet the boat, and within a half- 
hour of its docking Siegel had acquired the north-west 
corner of Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street. 

Now was the Chicagoan in a strategic position to do 
business with the Macy concern. At least so he felt. 
The concern felt differently. As far as it was con- 
cerned the corner point had sentimental value j nothing 
else. We already have seen how slight was its floor- 
space. Without hesitation it turned its back upon the 
tiny corner, and with the money that it had intended 
investing in it, purchased the leasehold of the huge 
theater of Koster & Bial — about twenty thousand 
square feet of ground space — which enabled it to place 
its mechanical departments (engine-rooms and the 
like) in its main building, and so to leave the former 
Tivoli and Pekin sites for the moment unimproved. 
This done, it turned its attention to the gentleman from 



The Store Treks Uftown 73 

Chicago. It leased him the premises at Fourteenth 
Street at a much higher figure than it would have been 
glad to rent them to another concern, and under the 
provisions that they should not be occupied until at 
least two years after the removal of the parent concern 
from them and that the name "Macy" should never 
again appear on the buildings of that site. 

With the site difficulties cleared up, the actual con- 
struction problems of the enterprise were entered upon. 
Nineteen hundred and one was born before Macy's was 
enabled to begin the wholesale destruction of the many 
buildings upon its new site. The job of clearing the 
site and erecting the new building was entrusted to the 
George A. Fuller Company, which had just completed 
the sensational Flatiron Building at the apex of Fifth 
Avenue and Broadway at Twenty-third Street, and it 
was one of the first, if not the very first of the building 
contracts in New York where the estimates were based 
upon the cubic feet contents. DeLomas and Cordes, 
who had had a considerable success in the planning of 
one or two of the more recent department stores in the 
lower Sixth Avenue district, were chosen as the achi- 
tects of the new building. Before they entered upon 
the actual drawing of the plans they made an extended 
study of such structures, both in the United States and 
abroad. The new building represented the last word 
in department store design and construction. Nine 
stories in height and with 1,012,500 square feet of 
floor-space, it was designed not only to handle great 
throngs of shoppers each day but the multifold working 
details of service to them, with the greatest expedition, 



74 The Romance of a Great Store 

and economy. To do this it was estimated that there 
would be required fourteen passenger elevators, ten 
freight elevators and seven sidewalk elevators of the 
most recent type. Four escalators were installed run- 
ning from the main floor to the fifth. It is to be 
noted, too, that these escalators were the very first 
to be installed in which the step upon which the 
passenger rides is held continuously horizontal. In 
the older types the ascending floor is held at an 
awkward angle of ascension and foothold is maintained 
only by the attaching of steel cleats at right angles to it. 

Lighting, ventilation, plumbing, all these received 
in turn the most careful consideration and planning. 
For instance, it was determined quite early in the 
progress of the planning for the new Macy store that 
it should be ventilated entirely by great fans, which, 
sucking the air in ducts down from the roof, would heat 
it or cool it, as the necessities of the season might 
demand, before distributing it through another duct to 
the working floors of the building. In this way the 
close and stuffy atmosphere somewhat common to old- 
time department stores when filled with patrons was 
entirely obviated in this new one. 

When we come to the consideration of the everyday 
workings of the Macy store today we shall see how 
well these architects of twenty years ago planned its 
details. We shall not see, however, one of the most 
interesting of them. When it was originally builded, 
by far the greater part of its ninth floor was devoted 
to a huge exhibition hall. Within a short time this 
room was in a fair way to become as famous as the 



The Store Treks Uptown 25 

larger auditorium of Madison Square Garden. In it 
were held poultry-shows, flower shows, even one of the 
very first automobile shows. Within a few years after 
its opening, however, the business of the store had 
grown to such proportions that it was found necessary 
to give its great space to the more mundane business of 
direct selling. 

The problem of the corner tip there at Thirty-fourth 
and Broadway was quickly overcome. If the new 
owner of that point had counted upon the new store 
which completely encircled him turning tens of thou- 
sands of folk past it each day he was doomed to disap- 
pointment. For Macy's made its own corner by means 
of a broad arcade entirely within the cover of its own 
huge roof; an inside street, lined with show-windows 
upon either side and giving, in wet weather as well as 
fine, a dry and handsome passageway direct from 
Broadway into Thirty-fourth Street. 

The original suggestion for such an arcade came in 
an anonymous letter to the original architects of the 
building. Only within the past year or two has this 
passageway been abandoned. The demands of the 
business for more elbow-room are voracious and appar- 
ently unceasing. And the space that the arcade con- 
sumed became entirely too great to be used any longer 
for such a purpose. 

In that summer of 1901, while the architects and 
contractors were busy at their plans and specifications, 
there was wholesale and systematic devastation upon 
such a scale as New York has rarely ever seen. Such 



J 6 The Romance of a Great Store 

pullings down and tearings away! The scene was not 
without its drama at any time. The writer well 
remembers strolling into the Koster & Bial Music Hall 
on an evening during that season of destruction. There 
was no one to bar his passage into what, at the time 
of its opening, but eight short years before, had been 
New York's most elaborate playhouse. If his glance 
had not been turned downward there was nothing to 
indicate that the evening performance might not easily 
begin within the hour. Upwards the great auditorium 
of red and gold was immaculate. The proscenium, the 
tier upon tier of balcony and of gallery, the dozens of 
upholstered boxes, the exquisitely decorated ceiling had 
not been touched. 

But if the eye glanced downward — what a difference! 
The main floor and its row upon row of heavy plush 
chairs was entirely gone. In their place was a mucky 
black sea of mud; a knee-high morass, if you please, in 
which a dozen contractor's wagons, hauled and tugged 
unevenly by squads of lunging mules and horses in 
their traces, circled in and circled out — inbound empty 
and outbound laden deep with their muddy burden. 
On the stage, back of what had once been the footlights 
and in the same place where the darling Carmencita had 
once been wont to make her bow, stood a shirt-sleeved 
gang-boss. On either side of him, spotlights — things 
theatrical yanked from the memories of yesteryear — 
threw their radiance down into the auditorium and the 
motley audience it held. 

So went Koster & BiaPs, the pet plaything of joyous 
New York in its Golden Age. In a short time the 



The Store Treks V ft own 77 

scaffolding was to rise in that mighty amphitheater and 
the decorations to come tumbling down. Gang upon 
gang to the roof} more gangs still to the stout side- 
walls, brick by brick j down they came until Koster & 
BiaPs was no more. Its site was marked by a huge 
and gaping hole in the subsoil of Manhattan. 

There were other phases of that tearing-down that 
were less dramatic and more comic. A restaurant- 
keeper who had a small eating place on the Broadway 
side of the site sought obdurately to hold out in his 
location — seeking an advantageous cash settlement 
from the store owners. His lease, perfectly good, 
1 still had from sixty to ninety days to run. He felt that 
the store could not wait that length of time upon him — 
1 that, in the language of the street, it would be forced 
i to "come across." But it did not "come across." It 
j was not built that way. It was built on either side of 
the restaurant. Its steel girders were far above its 
tiny walls and spanning one another across its ceiling 
before its disappointed proprietor moved out — at the 
end of his perfectly good lease — and without one cent 
of bonus money in his pocket; after which it was 
almost a matter of mere hours to tear the flimsy struc- 
] ture away and remove a small segment of earth that 
held it up to street level. A barber around the corner 
in Thirty-fourth street caught his cue from the 
restaurant. He, too, was going to stand pat. But 
jhe was not in the same strategic position as the 
restaurateur. He had no lease. He merely was 
going to stay and defy the wreckers. They would not 
dare to touch his neat, immaculate shop. 



78 The Romance of a Great Store 

They did dare. On the very night that his lease 
expired something happened to the business enterprise 
of the razor-wielder. A cyclone must have struck it. 
At least that was the way it looked. The barber, 
coming down to business on the morrow, found his 
movables upon the sidewalk, neatly piled together and 
covered by tarpaulins against the weather. But the 
shop was gone. Where it had stood on the close of 
the preceding day was a deep hole in the ground 5 and 
three Italian workmen were whistling the Anvil Chorus. 

About the tenth of October, 1901, actual construction 
began on the new building. On the first day of 
November of the following year it was complete — or 
practically so. It was a record for building, even in 
New York, which is fairly used to records of that sort. 
A steel-framed nine-story building, approximately four 
hundred feet on Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets, 
by one hundred and eighty feet on Broadway (widen- 
ing to two hundred feet at the west end of the 
store), with 1,012,500 square feet of floor-space, and 
13,500,000 cubic feet in all, had been erected in a trifle 
over six months. In the meanwhile the wisdom of the 
Macy choice of location was already being made evi- 
dent. A Washington concern — Saks and Company — 
was on its way toward Herald Square. It took the 
west side of Broadway for the block just south of 
Thirty-fourth Street, and by dint of great effort and 
because its building was considerably smaller in area, 
succeeded in getting into it ahead of Macy's. 

Herald Square! There was, and still is, a site well 



The Store Treks Uftown 79 

worth rushing toward. We have seen already the 
strategic advantages of the new site, even as far back 
as 1 902, long before the coming of the great Pennsyl- 
vania Station just back of it at Seventh Avenue. Ever 
since 1890, when the remarkable vision of the late 
James Gordon Bennett had seen the crossing of Broad- 
way and Sixth Avenue as the finest possible location for 
his beloved Herald and had torn down the little eld 
armory in the gorge between these two thoroughfares, 
Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Streets, to build a 
Venetian palace for it there, the square had been a 
veritable hub for the vast activities of New York. 
Hotels, shops and theaters sprang up roundabout it. 
And the coming of what is one of the finest, if not the 
very largest, of the great railroad terminals of the 
land but multiplied its real importance. 

The actual moving from the old store to the new was 
a herculean task. Yet it was accomplished within three 
days — which means that large enterprise was reduced 
through the perfection of system to a rather ordinary 
one. This could not have been if all its details and its 
possibilities had not been anticipated long in advance 
and planned against. 

The job was undertaken by the store itself; through 
its delivery department, in charge of Mr. James Price, 
with Mr. James Woods as his very active assistant. 
Both of these men are veteran employees of Macy's. 
The service record of the one of them reaches to forty- 
one years and the other to forty-eight. They knew full 
well the size of the moving-day task that confronted 



80 The Romance of a Great Store 

them. To pick up a huge New York department-store 
and carry it twenty uptown blocks — almost an even 
mile — was a deal of a contract. Yet neither of them 
flinched at it. But both put on their thinking-caps and 
evolved a definite plan for it — a plan which in all its 
details worked without a hitch. 

The old store closed its doors for the final time at 
six o'clock in the evening of Monday, November 3, 
1902. The following day was Election Day. The 
movers voted early. They came to the Fourteenth 
Street store not long after daybreak and there began 
the great trek uptown — stock and fixtures. For three 
days they kept a steady procession} west through Four- 
teenth Street, then north through Seventh Avenue — to 
Thirty-fourth — from the old store to the new — and the 
empty wagons returning down through Sixth Avenue 
to Fourteenth Street once again. The entire route was 
carefully patrolled by special guards and policemen, 
and the entire task finally accomplished late on Thurs- 
day evening, the 6th, at which Mr. Isidor Straus was 
called on the telephone and told quietly: 

"We shall be able to open tomorrow if you wish it/ 1 
But the head of the house advised that the opening 
be set for Saturday, as had been advertised} it would 
give a final valuable day for setting things to rights, 
which meant that at eight o'clock on the morning of 
Saturday, November 8, the new store opened its doors 
to the public that was anxiously awaiting the much 
heralded event} with as much simplicity and seeming 
ease as if it had been situated at Thirty-fourth Street 
for the entire forty-four years of its life, instead of 



The Store Treks Uptown 8 1 

but a mere twenty-four hours. A great task had been 
accomplished, a long step forward safely taken — and 
Macy's was ready to enter upon a new decade of its 
existence. 

In its wake there came uptown the other department- 
stores of New York} one by one until, with but three 
exceptions, every one of these establishments which had 
been situated south of Twenty-third Street and which 
are still in business today, had joined in the trek. 
Lord & Taylor's left its comfortable home at Broadway 
and Twentieth Street, in which it had been housed for 
nearly half a century since coming north from its orig- 
inal location in Grand Street, and moved to Fifth 
Avenue and Thirty-ninth} its ancient neighbor in 
Broadway, Arnold Constable & Company, stood again 
almost cheek by jowl in Fifth Avenue. McCreery's, 
first establishing an uptown branch in Thirty-fourth 
Street, eventually abandoned its older store in Twenty- 
third Street and consolidated its energies in the upper 
one. Mr. Altman moved his business to its new marble 
palace at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth, and Stern's 
went as far north as Forty-second. Lower Sixth 
Avenue began to look like a deserted village. Simp- 
son-Crawford's, Greenhut's, Adam's, O'Neill's — one 
by one these closed their doors for the final time. 
Once, and that was but two decades ago, they had been 
household words among the women of New York. 
Now their buildings were emptied, stood empty and 
jdeserted for months and for years — in most cases until 
the coming of the Great War and our participation in 



j 



82 The Romance of a Great Store 

it, when the Government was very glad to make use of 
their spacious floors for war manufacturing and for 
hospitalization. Of Macy's old-time competitors 
downtown who failed to join in the uptown movement, 
but three remained — Wanamaker's, DanielPs and 
Hearn's, who stood and still stand pat and prosperous 
in the locations which they have occupied for almost 
half a century. 

The rest are all gone. Twenty-third Street, which 
of a Saturday afternoon used to be filled from Fifth 
Avenue to Sixth with smart folk of every sort, is as 
dull as the deserted lower Sixth Avenue. Memories 
walk its spacious pavements. The Eden Musee, 
that paradise for youth of an earlier generation, is 
vanished. So is the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which for 
forty years played so large a part in the political history 
of the town. That part of New York today is all but 
dead — inside of twenty years. Some day hence it may 
be reborn. Such things have come to pass in the big 
town ere now. 

In the meantime the newest New York has come into 
its being. The construction of the two modern railroad 
terminals — the one in Thirty-third Street and the other 
in Forty-second — has created in the district that lies 
between them what today would seem to be the per- 
manent retail shopping center of the city. The one 
station brings nearly 6o,000 folk — transients and com- 
muters — the other almost 100,000, into New York each 
business day. They anchor and anchor firmly, its new 
business heart. Its sidewalks are daily thronged. As 
was Twenty-third Street two decades ago, so has 







mm* 



/-' ..-* 



tkksx ry„i fa i 



THE MACY'S OF TODAY 

By 1903 the new Macy's in Herald Square was finished and the 
business going forward in great strides 



The Store Treks U ft own 83 

Thirty-fourth become today. Not only the railroad 
stations but four great subways running north and 
south, four elevated railways, too, a dozen surface-car 
lines, and innumerable taxis and private motor-cars 
pour their passengers into it. It is a thoroughfare of 
surpassing importance. 

Fifty years ago, as Rowland H. Macy walked home 
one evening with his daughter — as was his frequent 
wont — from the simple little old red-brick store in 
Fourteenth Street to their new house in Forty-ninth, 
he paused for a moment with her in front of the old 
Broadway Tabernacle. 

"I want you to notice this corner, very carefully, 
Florence," said he. a A half-century hence and the 
business of New York is to be centered between 
Thirty-fourth Street and Forty-second. Here is to be 
the future business heart of this wonderful city." 

It is upon the vision of men quite as much as upon 
their prudence that the success of their enterprises 
depends. 



Today 



I. A Day in a Great Store 

THE subtle hour which in summer comes just 
before the break of day is the only hour in which 
New York ever sleeps j if indeed the modern Bagdad 
ever sleeps at all. There is an hour, however — from 
three of the morning until four — when the city is all 
but stilled} when its heart-beats are at the lowest ebb 
of the twenty-four. In that hour even Broadway is 
nearly deserted and Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth 
Street equally emptied. The swinging lights of a 
white-fronted lunch-room or two; the echoing racket 
of an extremely occasional surface-car or elevated train j 
the rush of a "night-hawk" taxi} the clatter of the 
milk-wagonj the measured walk of a policeman and 
the hurried one of some much belated suburbanite 
hurrying toward the great railroad station over in 
Seventh Avenue} these sounds, occasional and unre- 
lated seemingly, are not New York} not at least the 
New York that you and I are accustomed to knowing. 
Yet, after all, they are New York} even, if you please, 
the New York of that throbbing heart, Herald Square. 
Soon after four in the morning the city begins to 
rise. New York's heart-beat is quickening, distinctly, 
even though ever and ever so slightly at the beginning. 
Yet the activity is distinguishable. The policemen 
and the cabbies in the square realize it, so do the waiter 

87 



88 The Romance of a Great Store 

and the cook in the Firefly lunch wagon which has 
stood in the busy Herald Square these thirty years or 
more now. The morning papers are out. The news- 
paper wagons, as well as those that bring milk and other 
comestibles, begin to multiply. The earliest workers 
in the heart of Manhattan now bestir themselves. 
By six there is real animation in the broad streets in 
and roundabout Macy's. By seven the traffic there 
begins to be a matter of reckoning. A traffic policeman 
makes his appearance. The current of vehicles and 
humans in those thoroughfares come under regulation. 
At eight, the city is in full sway. 

All this while Macy's has stood dark — save for the 
few yellow and red lights which police and fire pro- 
tection demand. It fronts toward Broadway and the 
side streets alike are cold, impassive, unanimated. 
Inside the great dark building the watchmen are on 
ceaseless patrol. There are miles of corridors to be 
paced — the night walking of the Macy watchmen 
would reach from Dan to Beersheba or possibly from 
New York to Erie — millions of dollars worth of stock 
and fixtures to be guarded. A diamond ring would be 
missed j and so would a spool of thread. Nothing 
must be disturbed. And in order that the owners of 
the store may sleep in the sound assurance that nothing 
is being disturbed, the night patrol is made a matter 
of system and of record. Watchmen's clocks, here 
and there and everywhere, proclaim the regularity of 
the system. And an occasional surprise test now and 
then acclaims its thoroughness. 



A Day in a Great Store 89 

Hours before, the store was thoroughly cleaned j 
from cellar to roof. The last of yesterday's belated 
shoppers was hardly out of this market-place, before 
the men of the cleaning squads were in upon their 
heels. What a mess to be tidied up! Eight and one- 
half hours of hard endeavor can make daily a mighty 
dirty store and a huge housekeeping job. There is 
at the best a vast litter — and yet a litter that cannot 
be carelessly thrust away. In all that debris there 
may be some one tiny article of great value — a ring or 
a purse, dropped by some hasty or careless shopper or 
salesgirl. It all must be carefully gone through and 
in the morning sent to the Lost and Found Department 
where the chances are that it will not remain very long 
before having a claimant. 

Such is the ordinary routine of the cleaning squads. 
On rainy or snowy days its job is increased, measurably. 
It is astonishing the amount of filth the sidewalks of 
New York can give up on a wet day. Yet rain, or no 
rain, filth or no filth, the cleansing must be thorough. 
The store at eight o'clock of the next morning must be 
as clean as the proverbial pin. An earnest of which 
you can obtain for yourself any day by pressing your 
nose, among the first of the impatient early shoppers, 
against the panes of the public entrance doors. 
Through the night these toilers work; silently, unseen, 
save by others of their own kind. Far below them, in 
the cellars of the great structure at Thirty-fourth 
Street and Broadway, there are other squads who stand 
to unending tricks at the boilers, the engines, the 
dynamos and the other mechanical appliances of the 



90 The Romance of a Great Store 

organism. The fires may never diej the lights never 
go out — not even from one year's end to the other. 
And so that the very heart and blood and nerve-force 
of Macy's shall in truth be unending there are engines 
and boilers and dynamos in the mechanical plant under 
the Thirty-fourth Street sidewalks. As many as five 
hundred tons of coal can be housed in the bunkers hard 
at hand. The entire plant could easily light and sup- 
ply the other necessary electric current for the needs of 
any brisk American town of five or six thousand people. 

Eight o'clock, and the night superintendent of the 
store unlocks the first of its outer doors. But not to 
the public. Mr. Public's hours do not begin until a 
full sixty minutes later. First the store must be made 
ready for his coming. It is not enough that it shall 
be thoroughly cleaned in every fashion. The stock 
must be displayed anew; the long miles of dust cover- 
ings lifted off, folded and put away until the coming 
of another evening. Which means, of course, that the 
store folk must come well in advance of its patrons. 

In the half-hour which elapses between eight and 
eight-thirty, many of the minor executives — particu- 
larly those of the selling floors — make their appearance 
at the designated doors upon the side streets. In 
the parlance of the organization these are known as 
"specials" and are divided into several classes, denoting 
chiefly their connection with its selling or non-selling 
forces. They "sign in" their arrival upon a sheet. For 
while Macy's is known as the department-store without 
a time-clock, there is none which is more punctilious 



A Day in a Great Store 91 

about keeping an exact record of the comings and goings 
of its workers, from the lowest to the highest. In the 
entire permanent organization of more than five thou- 
sand folk, there are not more than ten or a dozen who 
are exempted from this necessity. A man may draw a 
twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year salary at Macy's and 
still be compelled to sign his time. It is part of the 
inherent democracy of the organization which holds as 
a high principle that what is fair for one man is fair 
for another. A better bed-rock principle can hardly 
be imagined. 

Half after eight! 

A bell rings somewhere. The time-lists of the minor 
executives — perhaps it is better to remember them as 
the specials — are closed, and new ones substituted. 
These are duplicates of the earlier ones. When the 
section manager (a modern and much better name for 
the "floor-walker" of the earlier days) signs one of 
these, he does not merely put down an "X" as before 
eight-thirty, but specifically writes down his arriving 
time. 

But from eight-thirty to eight-forty-five is known to 
the rank and file of the organization as its hour for 
arrival. Three doors — one in Thirty-fourth Street 
(for the women, as well as for men executives) and two 
others, in Thirty-fifth Street (for the other men 
workers and the junior girls respectively) open on the 
precise moment of the half-hour. Even before they 
swing backward upon their hinges the earliest risers of 
the Macy family are beginning to group themselves in 



92 The Romance of a Great Store 

front of them. They go tramping up the broad stairs 
together; dropping into the slender receptacles the 
individual brass checks (of which much more a little 
later) at the first barrier-gateway 5 after which they go 
scurrying off to the locker-rooms, before descending or 
ascending to their various posts in the store. 

For fifteen minutes this rank and file — a miniature 
army it is — comes trooping in. There is no time to be 
lost 3 and yet no unseemly haste or confusion. And 
no noise. Noise, particularly surplus noise, is quite 
unnecessary in a machine which is functioning well. 

At eight-forty-five the barrier at the head of the 
main employees' stair at Thirty-fourth Street closes. 
And in order that there may not be even the slightest 
particle of unfairness — one gains an increasing admira- 
tion for the absolute impartiality of an organization 
such as this — the pressing of a button at that stairhead 
automatically orders closed the two auxiliary entrances 
in Thirty-fifth. And yet, in order perhaps that 
perfectly automatic and impartial systems may, after 
all, be tinged by a bit of human sympathy and under- 
standing, eight-forty-five is forever translated at the 
employees' doors as eighty-forty-seven. And in cases 
of bad weather, hard rain or snow or extreme cold, 
eight-forty-seven becomes the stroke of nine by the 
clock — in very extreme cases even later, with a special 
allowance being made from time to time for the occa- 
sional breakdown of New York's rather temperamental 
transportation system. 

From eight-forty-five (eight-forty-seven) to nine 
o'clock, the late-comers — out of breath as a rule and 



A Day in a Great Store 93 

extremely embarrassed into the bargain-^-are herded 
into a special group and given special "late" passes, 
without which they may not even enter the locker 
rooms, to say nothing of their posts in the store. 
Sometimes — when the tardiness percentages of the 
store have been running to unwonted heights — the 
group is admonished} always gently, always con- 
siderately. It is made to them a point of fairness, 
between the store and themselves. And almost invari- 
ably the admonition is received in the spirit in which 
it is given. In other days it was quite customary for 
the store manager or one of his several assistants to 
receive these late-comers personally and individually 
and talk to them, heart-to-heart. This method has 
now been entirely abolished. It led to controversy. 
It led to argument. And both of these led to ill- 
feeling. Macy's will not tolerate ill-feeling between 
its executives and its rank and file. Therefore, any- 
thing that might even tend to such an end was 
abolished — completely and permanently. 

In due time, and when we are studying in greater 
detail the Macy family, we shall come again to the 
consideration of the methods of checking the force in 
in the morning and out again at night — as well as in 
and out at different intervals throughout the day. 
Consider now that it is still lacking a few brief minutes 
of nine o'clock on a workday morning. The sales 
force are through the lockers and getting to their day's 
work upon the floor. The non-selling forces as well — 
elevator-men, cashiers, all the rest of them, are at their 



94 The Romance of a Great Store 

posts. A doorman is told off to each of the public 
street entrances to the main floor. It is the regular 
post for each of these. He goes to it a minute or two 
before the coming of nine. 

After a brief period of busy activity the store aisles 
are for the moment practically deserted once again. 
There is a group of buyers "signing in" — once again 
the inevitable time-list — at the superintendent's office 
just beneath the main stair, where five or ten minutes 
ago the "big chief" of the whole main floor was giving 
his section managers their special instructions for the 
day. The rest of the aisles are all but empty. The 
clerks are behind the desks, the cashiers at their posts, 
the section managers at attention, the elevators banked 
and waiting at the ground floor — Then — 

Nine o'clock! 

The echo of Madison Square Mary telling the hour 
comes rolling up Broadway. The street doors swing 
open; almost as if working upon a single mechanism. 
The first of the shoppers come tumbling in. The 
great main aisle of the store — one thinks of it almost 
as the Broadway of this city within a city — is populated 
once again. The chief stream of the store's patrons 
pours down through it. Other streams from the doors 
in the side streets join it; still others diverge down the 
side aisles, up the stair and escalators, into the elevators 
which presently go packing off, one by one, toward the 
mysterious and fascinating regions of the upper floors. 
In three or four brief minutes the picture that one has 
of that mighty first floor from the mezzanine balcony 
that runs roundabout it is of a great mass of hurry- 



A Day in a Great Store 95 

ing, scurrying humanity 5 no longer any well-defined 
currents, but little eddies and pools of human beings 
constantly and forever changing. 

And this but hardly past nine o'clock in the morning. 
In another hour there will be still more folk within the 
great building. Most of them have come to shop, a 
few of them to take a tardy breakfast in the comfortable 
restaurant upon its eighth floor. One might not think 
that it would pay to open a restaurant for breakfast at 
as late an hour as nine in the morning, but such a one 
would not know his New York. Breakfast in our big 
town is rarely over until the setting of the sun. 

For an hour at the beginning of the day the Macy 
family may shop in its own interest. The sales- 
women — the men as well — may obtain permits from 
their division managers which in turn entitle them to 
large and conspicuous shopping cards which serve two 
pretty definite purposes — the identification of the sales- 
woman as an actual and authorized shopper (she is not 
supposed to go nosing around other departments merely 
in her own interest or curiosity) and the obtaining for 
her of the discount to which she is entitled. Macy's 
is known pretty generally as a store of no special 
privileges or discounts. Teachers, clergymen, profes- 
sional shoppers, dressmakers are recognized and wel- 
comed in the big store, but only upon the same terms 
as every other sort of customer. But the rule bends, 
ever and ever so gently, for the man or woman who is 
employed within it. After all, he or she is a part of 
the family and so entitled to be recognized. This 



96 The Romance of a Great Store 

recognition takes the form of a sizable reduction upon 
the wearing apparel necessary for his or her personal 
use. This difference goes upon the books of the store 
as a business expense. 

By ten the store has finished shopping in its own 
behalf. Its maximum force for the day is on the job 
and the wise shopper comes close to this hour. For 
by eleven the force is reduced. Luncheon is a very 
simple human necessity j but a necessity, nevertheless. 
And New York has never countenanced the Parisian 
habit of locking up practically all shops and stores and 
offices for an hour and a half or two hours in the middle 
of the day. But then New York has never taken its 
meal-times quite so seriously as Paris. Upon this one 
thing alone a considerable essay might be written. 

But New York must lunch, just as Paris or London 
or any other community must lunch. And so for three 
valuable hours out of the middle of the day the Macy 
force is reduced nearly one-third its size. Forty-five 
minutes is the ordinary allotment for lunch and the 
house prefers that its folk shall take this mid-day meal 
underneath its roof. Toward this end it has made, as 
we shall see, elaborate and expensive preparations in 
the form of elaborate lunch-rooms and the like. 
However, it recognizes that there are many workers 
who prefer to go out at the middle of the day. And 
proper arrangements are made for the accommodation 
of these folk. 

By two o'clock, however, practically the entire selling 
force at least is back again. The hardest portion of 



A Day in a Great Store 97 

the day begins. For, no matter how hard the store 
may advertise, no matter how it may strive to educate 
its patrons in every other way to the use of its facilities 
in the less crowded and hence more comfortable morn- 
ing hours, the hard and solemn fact remains that it 
suits the comfort and convenience of the average New 
York woman to shop in the afternoon. And shop in 
the afternoon she does. She comes into Macy's right 
after luncheon — although a single glance at the big 
and crowded restaurant would easily convince you that 
she often lunches as well as shops in the big red-brick 
institution of Herald Square — and then gets right down 
to the serious business of shopping. 

And at Macy's it is business} always business. The 
big store at Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street, in 
recent years at least, has not gone in for shows — for 
organ and orchestral concerts or recitals or anything of 
that sort. It has considered that its best shows are 
always upon its counters. It has had no quarrel with 
the successful stores that have added entertainment 
features to the other routine of their operations. It 
merely has contended that its own method was com- 
pletely satisfactory to itself. Which, after all, is a 
position of infinite strength. 

"Macy's attractions are its prices !" is an advertising 
slogan of the house so long sounded now that it has 
become almost a household phrase to its hundreds 
of thousands of regular patrons. It is a phrase 
up to which it has lived, steadily and consistently. 
And not only has it steadfastly refused to give shows 
of any sort — save, of course, those wonderful window 



98 The Romance of a Great Store 

pageants of other years, which were horses of quite a 
different color indeed — but it has also refused up to 
the present time to install such non-merchandise enter- 
prises as manicuring parlors, hair-dressing rooms, 
barber shops and the like. And this despite the fact 
that in selling such things as groceries and automobile 
sundries — to take two specific instances out of several — 
it has gone considerably beyond the merchandise scope 
of some of the very largest of its New York 
competitors. 

"Hundreds of thousands of regular patrons?" you 
interrupt and repeat. "A hundred thousand people is 
a whole lot. Until very recently, at least, the popula- 
tion of what would be considered a pretty good-sized 
American city." 

Not long ago, I asked how many people came into 
Macy's in the passing of an average business day. I 
was promptly told that several times the firm had 
endeavored to make an actual and systematic count of 
the folk who passed through each of its many entrances, 
but had never entirely succeeded. Once, of a busy 
October day, the count up to two o'clock in the after- 
noon had reached and passed the one hundred and 
twenty thousand mark. At that time each of the great 
escalators which ascend from the main floor was 
handling its maximum capacity of 7,400 persons an 
hour j each of the fourteen public elevators was carry- 
ing the full number of passengers permitted it by law 
and the store management; while a host of other folk 
were doing business upon the ground floor without ever 



A Day in a Great Store 99 

ascending to the fascinating mysteries of the land of 
Up-Above. 

And that was October, If a man who had seen the 
throng of that pleasant autumn day and thought it 
well-nigh impossible only had returned to the big 
store on a December day — say the Saturday before 
Christmas last — he would have thought that three 
hundred thousand would have been far nearer the 
mark of the eight and one-half hours. Could more 
folk have been squeezed through those wide doors and 
into those broad aisles? It would have seemed not. 
Even with the aid of a whole corps of special police- 
men and traffic rules as scientific and as ingenious as 
those which regulate the vehicular traffic of nearby 
Fifth Avenue, it was a task of a good half-hour to get 
within the huge mart} another half -hour to get out 
again. Certain departments — notably toys — possessed 
navigation problems of their very own, and other 
departments, such as refrigerators and other household 
goods, were comparatively deserted. The Christmas 
trade is nothing if not oddly balanced. 

Through a store such as this one may wander, ad 
libitum,) and find a new surprise at nearly every corner 
of it. Certainly upon each of its floors. Nor are 
these to be limited, in any way, to the floors to which 
the public is ordinarily admitted. Once I remember 
coming through the eighth floor and suddenly emerg- 
ing upon a clean, crisply lighted little workshop. At a 
long bench underneath an atelier-like window three 
men, fairly well-advanced in years, were working. 
One was engraving upon silver — the other two upon 



100 The Romance of a Great Store 

glass. The chief of the shop explained to me that in 
the beginning they were Germans but they had been in 
Macy's so many, many years that they were today to 
be classed as pretty thoroughly Americanized. One 
of them had sat at that bench — and the one down in 
Fourteenth Street that had preceded it before the 
northward trek to Thirty-fourth Street — for over 
thirty-two years. The three men were artisans — of the 
old school and of a sort that seemingly is not bred these 
days. 

"When they are gone I do not know where we shall 
go to replace them," said the superintendent. 

"You will have to quit doing this sort of work?" I 
ventured. 

He answered quickly: 

"Oh no," said he, "Macy's never quits. We shall 
have to find others — even if we train them ourselves. 
It is only the material for training that worries me. 
American young men of today are not overfond of 
painstaking work of this sort." 

I knew instantly what he meant. As a nation we 
are made up of "shortcut" experts. Perseverance, 
patience, a tedious attention to uninteresting detail, 
have seemingly but little appeal to the average young 
man who is looking forward to a real career for him- 
self. To be an executive — no matter by what name 
or title — and in as short a time as is humanly possible 
is apparently the only object that he sees ahead of him. 
A laudable ambition to be sure. But one shudders at 
the mere thought of a land which should be composed 
entirely of executives and wishes that we might 



A Day in a Great Store 101 

develop more definitely a class of artisan workers, such 
as came to us forty, thirty, even twenty-five years ago. 

The oldest of these men — the man with thirty Macy 
years to his credit — was chasing a hunting scene upon 
a great glass bowl as I bent over his desk. It was more 
than artisanship, that task} it was artistry. A real 
work of real art even though at the moment these 
elaborate cut-glass designs have lost a little in public 
favor. In their own time and order they will come 
back again, however. And the workmanship that 
made them possible will be restored to its own former 
high favor. 

But even today there are large demands in Macy's 
for precisely this sort of thing. And glass grinding 
and engraving — which runs all the way from the 
making of prescription lenses for spectacles or for 
milady's lorgnons up to the cutting of an entire dinner 
service of the most exquisitely patterned glass or repairs 
to the bowl or pitcher that Bridget or Selma has so 
carelessly broken — is the chief factor of a shop that 
handles, as other parts of its day's job, jewelry and 
watch repairs, electro-plating of gold, copper, silver, 
nickel, the printing or engraving or stamping of 
stationery of every sort, to say nothing of leather goods 
of every kind and description and a thousand lesser and 
highly individual jobs, such as the regilding of a mirror 
or the transformation of an ancient whale-oil lamp into 
a modern incandescent one. It is small wonder that 
as a minimum seventy-five men are constantly em- 
ployed in this shop; more, as the exigencies of this 
season or of that may demand them. 



102 The Romance of a Great Store 

Yet this is but one of Macy's shops under that giant 
roof of Herald Square. There are others in close 
proximity — like those for the making of mattresses and 
bedding of every sort and variety and the establishment 
which brings broken toys back into life again. To my 
own Peter Pannish soul this last forever has the great- 
est fascination. Once, long years ago, I went into a 
great store in a distant city and found up under its roof 
a man whose sole task from one year's end to the other 
was the making of repairs upon toy locomotives. How 
I envied that man his job! And how the other day I 
envied the job of the Macy man who was repainting 
dolls' houses, one fascinating suburban villa after 
another. The doctor in the far corner of the room, 
whose patients ran all the way from lovely dolls of the 
most delicate china and porcelain to Teddy Bears who 
apparently had been badly worsted in some terrific 
nursery struggle, was a man with a position in which 
he might have genuine pride; but for the painting and 
re-arranging of those small houses a man, with an 
imagination in his soul, might almost afford to pay for 
the privilege of doing the work! 

Five-thirty! 

Again the doormen to their posts, two or three 
minutes in advance of the exact hour set. The minute 
hand upon the face of the clock no sooner reaches the 
exact bottom of its course, before a bell rings within 
the store and the great doors shut — simultaneously, as 
in the morning they had opened. But not per- 
manently, of course. Dozens, hundreds, perhaps a 



A Day in a Great Store 103 

thousand or more shoppers still are left within the 
store. Each is to be accorded a full opportunity to 
finish his or her transactions. There is no hurry j no 
ostensible hurry, at any rate. It would not be good- 
breeding to hasten the customer upon his way. And 
a canon of good merchandising is good breeding. 

Gradually, however, the late-stayers eliminate them- 
selves. The big doors open to let them out, but never 
again this day to let newcomers in. No rule of the 
house is observed more inexorably. And so gradually 
the store empties itself. 

In the meantime certain departments have already 
ceased to function. The salesf oik are dismissed for 
the night and go scurrying off. A few bring out the 
dust-covers and these go out upon the stock. Counters 
are emptied. The stock, wherever possible, is put 
away, and when not put away is carefully covered. 
Nothing is left to chance nor to dust. System reigns. 
And the section manager, the last to leave his depart- 
ment for the night, makes sure that everything there is 
ship-shape against the coming of another day. 

Before he is gone — and he, in Macy's, is multiplied 
into ninety or a hundred human units — the cleaning 
squads are out upon the floor, rolling out their bin-like 
carts in orderly formation and proceeding upon the 
debris like a miniature army. Four, five, six hours of 
hard work await them. It will be midnight, perhaps 
later, before the store is absolutely clean again and 
settled down to the monotonous presence of the watch- 
man, to await the arrival of another dawn. 



104 The Romance of a Great Store 

In the meantime the Macy family is pouring forth 
into the side streets through the doorways through 
which they entered before nine of the morning. There 
is little restriction, no red-tape about their leaving. 
Their brass discs — each individual and bearing the 
employee's designating number — which they dropped 
in the morning have been returned to them in the 
course of the day for use again upon the morrow. 

The only formality about their leaving — if indeed 
it might be called a formality— is the quick-fire inspec- 
tion made by two store detectives who stand either side 
of the descending file at the main employees' stair, to 
see if any packages which are being carried out are 
lacking the check-room stamp and vise. 

These last are the store's protection against possible 
theft through its inner walls. The workers who bring 
packages in, either in the morning or at any later time 
in the progress of the day, are asked to take them to a 
well-equipped check and storage room close by the 
lockers, where they may regain them at night, stamped 
and vised, to go out into the open once again. Any 
purchases that they may make during the day follow a 
similar course. It is a definite and an orderly pro- 
cedure. Any other would be indefinite and to an extent 
disorderly. 

This is the reason why an occasional package — lack- 
ing the official stamp and vise of the check-room — is 
picked up by the keen-eyed detectives while its trans- 
porter is asked to tarry for a moment in an ante-room. 
In the course of an average evening there may be a half 
dozen of such outlaw packages detected. Their holders 



A Day in a Great Store 105 

are not thieves. There is not even the implication that 
they are thieves. They are simply trying to ignore a 
fair and open-minded rule which the store has made, 
not alone for its own protection but for the protection 
of every man and woman in its employ. Such is the 
explanation which the assistant store manager makes to 
them before he dismisses them, at just a few minutes 
before six. 

"We believe in explaining things," he will tell you 
afterwards. " For we believe that we gain the very 
best service from the Macy people by not asking them 
to work in the dark. If we make a rule and its rulings 
sometimes puzzle them — sometimes even seem a little 
arbitrary, perhaps — we tell them why we have had to 
make the rule and almost invariably find them satisfied 
and quite content." 

The packages, themselves, are detained overnight. 
The store reserves the right to make an inspection of 
them. Such inspection, even when it is made, rarely 
ever shows the package to be illicit. It merely is care- 
lessness. And the thoughtless worker to whom it is 
returned in the morning is merely asked not to be 
careless again, but to make a full and co-operative use 
of the facilities which are provided for the comfort, 
and the protection, of him and his fellows j which 
generally is all that is necessary to be said. 

By six the store is practically emptied of its workers. 
After that hour any one leaving it must have a pass 
and be interviewed by the night superintendent at the 
single door left open for exit. Night work in the 



106 The Romance of a Great Store 

Macy store is little and far between these days — save 
possibly in the Christmas season and even then it is 
held at a minimum j an astonishing minimum when one 
comes to compare it with the Christmas seasons of, say, 
a mere twenty years ago. The state law says that aside 
from that fortnight of holiday turmoil, the women 
workers of the store, who are considerably in the 
majority, shall not work more than fifty-four hours or 
oftener than one night a week and then not later than 
nine o'clock. In turn, the store, following the work- 
ings of the statute, designates Thursday as its late 
employment night. If, because of some emergency, it 
wishes to deviate from this, it must have a special 
permit. 

As a matter of fact, however, Macy's anticipates the 
law j goes far ahead of it. It finds its women workers 
not only willing to work the occasional Thursday night 
shifts, but, with the practical advantages of a full 
dinner furnished without cost and overpay to come into 
the reckoning, for the most part extremely anxious. 
And it reminds the solicitous legislators up at Albany 
that it was not a statute that abolished the pernicious 
habit of keeping the stores open for business evenings 
and late in the evening, but the progressive thought of 
the store managers of New York, themselves. These 
last have yielded little to the sentimentalists in real 
looking forward. Theirs have been the practical 
problems — not the least of these that of the education 
of a shopping public which seemingly had demanded 
that the big department-stores of New York should be 
kept open evenings — some evenings throughout the 



A Day in a Great Store 107 

entire year — and all evenings in a certain small and 
terrible season ; and without consideration of the task 
this custom imposed upon the patient folk who were 
serving them. Out of such lack of consideration, out of 
such selfishness, if you please, was a great practical and 
moral reform in merchandising evolved. Which was, 
in itself, no little triumph. 



II. Organization in a Modern 
Store 

I LIKE to think of modern business as a huge, great 
single machine 5 or better still, a group of little 
machines gathered together and functioning as one. It 
is a simile that I have used time and time again. To 
feel that some single achievement of industry — of 
manufacturing or of merchandising — is as well organ- 
ized and as well balanced as the many mechanisms that 
are laboring in its behalf, seems to bring the most single 
complete picture of modern business of the sort that 
our press has of ttimes- been pleased to term "big 
business." 

And sometimes I like to think of these "big busi- 
nesses" — with their hundreds and thousands of human 
units — as armies. At no time is this last comparison 
more apt than when one comes to apply it to the 

! modern department-store, as we today know it in 
America. For, even if you wish to grant an entire 
dissimilarity of purpose, one of these huge institutions 
has more than one point of similarity with an army. 
Not alone in numbers can this parallel be made, but 
quite as quickly in organization. While, to return to 
our first simile, it, too, is a big machine — humanized. 

i Its parts are carefully co-ordinated so that the whole 

109 



HO The Romance of a Great Store 

will function with the least possible friction. Like an 
army it is officered with its generalissimo, its under 
generals, its colonels, its captains, its lieutenants, its 
sergeants and its corporals. The difference is only in 
nomenclature. The structure is quite the same. For, 
when you come to analyze, you will find the divisions 
of labor and of authority quite corresponding to similar 
divisions in the army. Officer, "non-com" and 
private — each contributes his more or less important 
part j each is a necessary factor in the success of the 
enterprise. 

Like an army, the department-store of modern 
America is designed to move constantly forward. The 
"big-chief" scans his balance sheets, the rise and fall of 
the curves of his outgo and income averages, the tre- 
mendously meaningful jagged red lines of his graphic 
charts, quite as carefully as the army general keeps 
track of the movement of his forces upon the maps 
which his topographists send him. He gathers his 
officers roundabout him and plans the strategy of busi- 
ness with the same shrewd foresight that must be 
observed by the successful military leader. He must 
be a promoter of morale throughout his forces, even 
down to the newest and the lowest-paid clerk. There 
must be constant liaison between the general and the 
private in the ranks. 

In considerable detail this parallel can be carried out. 
Soon, however, it must come to an end. That is, it 
ends in so far as Macy's is concerned. For the army at 
Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street is neither an army 



Organization in a Modern Store ill 

of offense nor of defense. Its sole position always is 
upon the front line of service. 

At the head of the organization there are the three 
brother partners who inherited their original interest in 
the great business from their father, the late Isidor 
Straus, who, with their mother, lost his life in the 
supreme catastrophe of the sinking of the Titanic. In 
1 9 14 they acquired Nathan Straus' interest by purchase. 
These men, Jesse Isidor, the president, Percy S., the 
vice-president, and Herbert N., the secretary and 
treasurer, are its triple head and front. While each 
has trained himself to be a merchandise specialist of the 
highest order, there is none that knows the details of 
Macy's better than his brothers — they share equally 
in the supreme authority that directs the business. 
Directly responsible to them, in turn, is its general 
manager, its merchandise council and its advertising and 
financial departments. 

As I write these paragraphs, the great chart of the 
Macy organization lies upon my desk. It is a vast and 
fascinating thing. With the lines extending upon it 
here and there and everywhere from the box which 
holds the triple-head, branching and rebranching here 
and there and again, it looks not unlike a giant mapj 
a chart, if you prefer to have it so. And so it is, a chart 
upon which the steersmen of so vast and so responsible 
an enterprise safely pick their course upon a seemingly 
unending journey. 

"Government by draughting-board," sniffed an old- 
j time business man to me once, when I was trying to 
explain to him in some detail how a great steel manu- 



112 The Romance of a Great Store 

facturing plant of the Middle West attempted to 
accomplish its huge job, economically and efficiently, 
by the use of graphic charts. And he added : "Fd like 
to see myself held down by blue-print authority." 
To which, after all this while, I should like to reply: 
"I should like to see a concern, as big and as suc- 
cessful as Macy's, operated without a careful charting 
of its always difficult path." 

Yet, as a matter of hard fact, Macy's, any more than 
any other big and well-planned business organism of 
today, never binds itself to go blindly and unthinkingly 
upon the lines of the charts — and nowhere else. The 
real trick of executive direction seems to be to know 
when to follow these lines and when more or less to 
completely disregard them. Rule-of-thumb can never 
again overcome the rules of averages, of percentages 
or of economic laws. But the rule of wit and of human 
understanding can of ttimes be used to temper this first 
group and sometimes with astonishingly successful 
results. 

A glance or two at this imposing organization chart 
lying before me begins to show the many, many 
ramifications of the huge Macy business tree. It 
shows, for instance, how, under the direction of the 
merchandise council, are four large branches of store 
activity more or less inter-related: the handling of 
Macy's own merchandise (meaning particularly that 
which is either made in the store's own factories or at 
least made under its direct supervision) j the work of 
the large force of buyers ; the comparison department 



Organization in a Modern Store 113 

(an important phase of the business to which we shall 
come in our own good time) 5 and the foreign offices. 
In the financial department, the controller is the 
quite logical chief. His general duties are fairly 
obvious. To help him in them, he has, under his 
direction, the chief cashier, the salary office, the audit- 
ing department, the depositors' account department — 
this last a most distinctive Macy feature — and a statisti- 
cal department. 

Obvious, too, is the greater part of the work of the 
publicity department. It includes in addition to the 
advertising manager — always an important factor in 
the modern department-store and particularly so in the 
case of Macy's — a display manager. It is the job of 
the first of these men to tell the public of the mer- 
chandise being offered for sale at the sign of the red 
star j the job of his compeer to see that it is properly 
displayed to them. 

And, finally, there is the general manager — last but 
not least. Connected by an exceedingly direct and 
much-traveled line with the general offices upon the 
seventh floor of the store are Mr. W. J. Wells, the 

I store's general manager, and his advisory council. 

! For the G. M., big as he is always, has need of much 
advice. Upon his broad and efficient shoulders are 
placed such a tremendous array of responsibilities that 
one cannot but marvel at the sheer efficiency of the 
man — to say nothing of his reserves of physical and 
mental strength — who can hold down such a job. Yet, 
at Macy's, the man himself disclaims any superhuman 
powers. 



114 The Romance of a Great Store 

"I am merely the automatic governor to this big 
machine," he will tell you, in his own simple, direct 
way. "In fact, if the machine always functioned one 
hundred per cent, efficient, there really would be no 
need either of me or of my job. It is because no 
machine that is built of human cogs and cams and levers 
and pulleys may ever work at one hundred per cent, 
efficiency that I, or some other man, must sit in this 
office. It is our job to meet the unusual and the 
unforeseen. We take up slack here and loosen there." 

The translation of this is unmistakable. If the three 
men upon the high seventh floor of the institution are 
its steersmen, this man, who has his office at the rear 
of its broad mezzanine balcony, is at least its chief 
engineer. And to assist him he has five assistant 
engineers — assistant general managers, in reality. The 
habit of simile leads one into odd designations of title. 
Each of these five assistant general managers — we shall 
stand by the nomenclature of the store — in turn has a 
large number of departments reporting to him. While 
in addition to them and ranking as virtual assistant 
managers are the superintendent of the detective bureau 
and that of the building, itself. 

The general manager, himself, is charged with the 
general duty of engaging, training and educating 
employees. He regulates salaries. He controls the 
transfer and discharge of employees. He is charged 
with the enforcement of all rules and regulations. He 
is the final authority to decide whether or not mer- 
chandise is returnable, for refund, exchange or credit. 
He also is the authority who adjusts all claims or con- 






« 






n 




<r]l$mm 






WHERE MILADY OF MANHATTAN SHOPS 

The vast ground floor of Macy's is, in itself, a mark of much interest 

and variety 



; 



Organization in a Modern Store 115 

troversies with customers. And he is the one to whom 
employees may appeal if they feel they are being 
treated unfairly by their superiors. 'A man-sized job 
truly! And because no one man, short of a super- 
human at any rate, could ever perform all of its various 
and perplexing functions, Mr. Wells has his five 
assistants. In the event of his absence as well as that 
of any one of them the man below rises temporarily 
into his immediate superior's job. 

It is the major task of the first of these assistants to 
direct the work of the floor superintendents — eight of 
these — and through them that of the section managers 
and the actual sales forces j nearly two thousand people 
all told. In other words, his job is the selling. To 
this great force and to the countless problems that must 
arise in its day-by-day direction there is added the over- 
sight of the personal shoppers' service. Which means 
in turn the furnishing of guides throughout the depart- 
ments to shoppers who ask for them; finding translators 
for folk to whom the intricacies of our tongue are 
unsolved mysteries and, in certain specific and necessary 
cases, the sending of merchandise with a member of the 
sales force into the homes of Macy's patrons. 

The second and the third assistant managers are the 
heads of non-selling organizations within the store, the 
fourth and the fifth handle the training and the edu- 
cational departments, respectively. The second assist- 
ant has, as his especial responsibility, the merchandise 
checkers, the collectors, the stock clerks, the cashiers 
and the interior mail and messenger service. The 
other non-selling assistant general manager supervises 



1 1 6 The Romance of a Great Store 

the receiving department, the department of money 
orders and adjustments, the supply department, the 
delivery, the receiving, the time office, the manufactur- 
ing, and sundry other smaller specialties of the store j 
small, however, only in a comparative sense. Taken 
by themselves they quickly would be seen to be sizable 
indeed. 

The tasks of most of these departments are fairly 
obvious from their names. Some of the others we 
shall see in a bit of detail as we go further into the store 
and its workings. In other chapters we shall describe 
what the great delivery department is supposed to 
accomplish, and actually does accomplish, the scope and 
plan and reach of the departments of training and of 
employment, and some others, too. It takes no great 
strain upon the imagination to conceive of the im- 
portance of the detective bureau's work, nor that of the 
superintendent of buildings. 

So much, then, for a preliminary bird's-eye view of a 
mammoth machine, not a machine for turning out shoes 
or typewriters or paper, but for buying and selling all 
these things and many, many more. And as you read 
in the earlier part of this book, the huge mechanism did 
not spring into its being in a year, or in a decade, or 
even in a generation. It represents slow, hard, steady 
growth; and slow, hard, steady growth it is still having. 

There are now one hundred and eighteen depart- 
ments in Macy's and yet, out of many thousands of 
separate and distinct items, there are some things that 
the store does not sell. Some of these commodities 
are handled by other great department-stores. But 



Organization in a Modern Store 117 

while Macy's may and does follow a charted path, it 
is its own chart and its own path. It never follows 
blindly the pathways of others. So, for instance, it 
does not sell pianos. In this particular case, at least, 
the reason is not hard to discover. Remember, all the 
while, that Macy's sells for cash and for cash alone — 
always and forever j and then consider that in ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred, pianos are sold upon the 
installment plan. The installment plan is entirely 
outside of the Macy scheme of salesmanship. It may 
or may not be a good plan. But to adopt it Macy's 
would either have to change its selling policy or else 
dispose of so few pianos that it would not be profitable 
to maintain a department for them. This is the alpha 
and the omega of the piano, as far as Macy's is con- 
cerned. It has no intention either of changing its 
deep-rooted and well-founded selling policy, nor, on 
the other hand, of establishing a little-used and possibly 
unprofitable department. Upon this decision it stands 
quite content. 

Yet assuredly Macy's is organized to sell nearly all 
of the necessities of life — and an unusually large num- 
ber of the luxuries in addition. From hosiery to ice 
cream, from women's suits to artists' materials, from 
eye-glasses to sausages, and from petticoats to ukeleles, 
the list of the store's wares is almost without limit. 
Other furniture is not hedged about by the same mer- 
chandising traditions and restrictions as are pianos $ 
there are in the upper floor of this great market-place 
pieces of household furnishings whose prices run well 
into the hundreds and even thousands of dollars, to 



n8 The Romance of a Great Store 

say nothing of rare Oriental rugs, fine paintings and 
other works of art. 

These one hundred and eighteen departments have 
been arranged after long study and experience and well 
thought out plans. In fact, so many conflicting and 
intricate features have entered into their planning that 
it is hardly possible within the space of these pages to 
give more than the broad general policy of the depart- 
ment organizations of the store. Yet it is another of 
these fairly obvious principles that upon its main 
floor — where its space, square foot by square foot, is 
by far at its highest value, and where there is a maxi- 
mum of accessibility — should be displayed the items 
that sell the most quickly and the most readily. This 
follows the very reasonable theory that goods for 
which there is the most popular demand should at all 
times be the most accessible. Varying slightly in 
specific cases and conditions, as one ascends into the five 
upper selling floors of the store, the merchandise falls 
more and more into classifications that call for care and 
deliberation in the purchasing. Thus, upon the main 
floor, one will find such articles as umbrellas, books, 
candy, notions, and the like — to make but a few 
instances out of many — while upon the second, there 
will be yardage goods, linens, shoes and so forth. 

Parenthetically, it may be set down that in older 
days, yardage goods — meaning cloths and weaves of 
almost every sort — never used to be found above the 
ground floor of any department-store. Retail mer- 
chandising tradition in New York suffered a body blow 
some years ago when Macy's sent them upstairs. Even 



Organization in a Modern Store 119 

the men who worked in the department protested 
against the change. A sizable proportion of their 
income was and is in their commissions upon their total 
volume of sales. They could not see the sales upstairs. 

"For two cents I'd resign," said one of the veterans, 
just as the change was announced. 

No one offered him the two cents, however, and he 
remained. And the following year saw the depart- 
ment reach a new high level for total sales in its yard 
goods. 

One large reason for this in Macy's is the unusual 
accessibility of the upper floors from the street level. 
It required little or no effort for the customer to get to 
the second floor, or, for that matter, to the sixth. The 
store's unusual and fairly marvelous system of 
escalators, well-placed, smooth running, always avail- 
able, and to be safely used by even a rheumatic or a 
cripple, bring these self-same upper floors at all times 
within easy reach of the street, and without the use of 
the firm's generous plant of elevators. With the 
exception of the abnormal stress and strain of the 
holiday season, the vertical system of Macy's trans- 
portation is never very seriously taxed. 

To those upper floors, also, go the folk whose pur- 
chases necessitate the fitting of something or other to 
the human frame. As we have just seen, shoes are 
upon the second floor. On the third is the women's 
wearing apparel, with special dressing-room facilities 
for trying on and fitting. Similar conveniences are to 
be found in the men's clothing department upon the 
fifth floor. 



120 The Romance of a Great Store 

Rugs, upholstery and art objects generally require 
more time for selection than do shoes and socks, more 
room for display as well. They go, then, quite nat- 
urally to the broad spaces of the fourth floor. The 
same qualities, only somewhat emphasized, apply to 
furniture, which is shown and sold upon the sixth. 
That the restaurant is relegated to the eighth floor is 
due in large part to the necessity for having cooking 
odors where they can be carried away without reaching 
other parts of the store ; as well as to considerations in 
regard to the economy of floor space for an enterprise 
that is active during only a part of the day. 

Minor changes in the arrangement of all these de- 
partments are constantly and forever under way. A 
great market-place like Macy's never stays entirely put. 
Special considerations, special problems, unforeseen 
merchandising plans may at any moment make it not 
only advisable but necessary to change the location or 
the relative space of any or all the departments. At 
Christmas-time the unusual pressure upon some of 
them, accompanied by a slacking in others — unfor- 
tunately (or fortunately?) shoppers cannot be every- 
where and at the same moment — means many tem- 
porary changes — so one department must give some of 
its space for a time to its neighbor — a debt possibly to 
be repaid at some other season of the year, when 
thoughts are not on toys, or candies or jewelry, but 
upon such serious things as carpets or refrigerators. 

An interesting sidelight upon the intensive study that 
Macy's gives the psychology of its interior arrange- 
ments is furnished in the fact that, on the theory that 



Organization in a Modem Store 121 

the less deadly of the species has an inherent aversion 
to department-stores, men's furnishing goods in these 
emporiums should generally be displayed upon the 
main floor, and just as close to a street entrance as is 
possible. Macy's has been no exception to this rule. 
A man, even when he is in a mood for spending, wants 
it over with as soon as possible. He is impatient of the 
slightest delay. On the other hand, his wife or 
daughter will make of shopping a kind of ritual. And, 
perhaps, because of that, she is often the more intelli- 
gent and discriminating buyer. 

Today, however, space on the main floor of the 
larger stores in New York is proving so valuable for 
goods that appeal to women shoppers, that some of 
them are trying to find a new method of appealing to 
the man-in-a-hurry. And so there has come to be a 
distinct trend toward putting men's goods upon a high 
upper floor, but with special express elevator service, so 
that their purchasers can get in and out with a minimum 
use of their valuable time. 

That part of the organization of Macy's which 
always has, always has had, and always will have the 
chief visual appeal to the public, is the staff of sales 
people with whom it comes in constant contact. Again 
and again, as we come to consider the minute workings 

! of this great machine of modern business, we shall find 
its human factor looming larger before our very noses. 

J We can not dodge it. We have no desire to dodge it. 

j In fact, we find it at all times the most fascinating 

1 feature of our study. It is no part of this narrative to 



122 The Romance of a Great Store 

decide which part of the whole corps of workers in the 
store is the most important to it — it would be similar 
and quite as easy to try to give an opinion as to the 
relative importance of the mainspring and the balance- 
wheel of a watch — but it is enough to say here, as we 
shall say again and again, that the girl behind the 
counter — to say nothing of the man — is an absolutely 
indispensable feature. By her it rises j by her it might 
easily come tumbling down. 

Let me illustrate by the testimony of a young woman 
who recently was a girl behind the counter at Macy's: 

"It surely is true," she says, "that we salespeople 
can do a great deal to increase the business and the 
number of customers. Some of these last are, of 
course, nearly hopeless — they would try the patience 
of Job, himself — and then again there are the others 
who are most appreciative of your services. It was 
interesting to me, when first I went behind the counter, 
to see how many of my customers would say 'thank 
you.' I found that nearly all of them will, if only you 
make a real effort to please them. And the majority 
of the Macy salesforce does try to help a customer in 
any way that she needs help. One day I observed this 
incident, which is almost typical: A customer ap- 
proached our counter and put her bag down upon it. 
A saleswoman went to her at once, saying: 

" 'May I help you, madam?' 

"The customer shook her head, a negative; she was 
merely trying to adjust her veil, she explained. But 
our saleswoman was resourceful in her tact. 

" 'Well, maybe, I can assist you with that/ she 



Organization in a Modern Store 123 

insisted, and straightway proceeded to do so. That 
was her notion of the service of our store." 

It is incidents just like this — seemingly small when 
you take them apart and place them out by themselves- - 
but in the aggregate very real and very important, that 
make for a store its lifelong customers. Let the young 
woman continue. Like a good many other young 
women in the store she is a college graduate and also 
possessed of a power for shrewd observation. 

". . . One woman bought some gloves from me 
and while she waited for her change showed me her 
shopping-list. It was miles long, seemingly, and 
appeared to include everything from a safety-pin to a 
toy submarine. As she conned it, she said that she 
had shopped in Macy's for years, and nowhere else. 
In fact, I remember that she said that she would be 
completely lost in any other store. . . • Others 
came back, bringing a single glove that they had pur- 
chased a year or more before and wanting another pair 
just like them, they had been so satisfactory. . . . 

"Not all of them are quite so cheery, however. 
Occasionally some unreasonable and irate customer 
would appear, storming at having to wait a few 
precious moments for her change, or at not being able 
to find the same glove that her friend purchased the 
week before — the chances being quite good that her 
friend might have bought the glove in another store. 
These are the times that test the wit and diplomacy and 
resource of the girl behind the counter. 

"A day behind a counter is filled to the brim with 
experiences— you have your finger on the pulse of a 



124 The Romance of a Great Store 

part of the life of New York— you are a part of a huge 
and important organization, and you come into contact 
with the world in general. Even customers coming 
to our glove counter furnished us with interesting 
moments. One in particular came to me to get some 
of our children's woolen gloves. He was a robust old 
man — about fifty-five, I'd have said — but he told me 
he was sixty-nine. He said he had just bought the 
same gloves elsewhere for over twice as much. (I 
said I didn't doubt that in the least.) And then he 
went on to say his wife and daughters shopped in stores 
where the name meant a great deal, but that he always 
came to Macy's because he came for the merchandise 
he got. He ended by saying he was a happy man, 
with three romping grandchildren, that he daily 
handled over two thousand men, but couldn't handle 
one woman. I should like to see him try to run 
Macy's and have to handle some six thousand men and 
women." 

The personnel of each of the selling floors of the 
store is under the direction of an organization captain, 
whose precise title is floor superintendent. He has an 
understudy — or, as he is known in the parlance of the 
place, a relief — so that the floor is never, even for a 
minute, without an executive head. 

This floor superintendent is a man of considerable 
discretionary powers. He must be. These powers 
are being constantly brought into play as he is called 
upon to decide the merits of this or that customer's 
claim, He is a man of tact and judgment, both of 



Organization in a Modern Store 125 

which qualities are kept in constant operation. Upon 
his floor he is the direct representative of the manage- 
ment and so looks out for its interests. From his desk 
upon the floor headquarters he directs and supervises, 
yet he constantly circulates throughout his various 
departments and sees to it himself that the matters for 
which he is responsible are thoroughly carried out. 
The orderliness of the floor is his special concern, and 
when, from time to time, it becomes necessary to shift 
salesclerks from one department to another — as in the 
case of the numberless special sales requiring extra 
help — it is he who engineers the details of the transfer. 
Acting as lieutenants to the floor superintendents are 
the section managers, who, as we have already seen, 
were in the store of yesterday known as "floorwalkers." 
But in the Macy's of today something considerably 

1 different is meant from the superannuated and some- 
what pompous gentleman who used to condescend, 
when we asked for the location of silverware, to wave 
us away with a cryptic "second-aisle-to-the-right-rear- 

1 of-the-store." It now means a live, up-to-date, agree- 
able gentleman, with a manVsize job to fill. 

Not only must he ascertain the customers' needs and 

1 direct all of them, plainly and courteously, but he has 
direct supervision over all of the employees within his 

: section. He is held responsible for their deportment 
and it is his duty to observe, as far as possible, their 

• mental, moral and physical condition. He must be 
able to detect errors in the methods used by his sales- 

; clerks, and in order that he may be in a position to teach 

1 them correct methods, he must, himself, be master of 



126 The Romance of a Great Store 

the store system. Parts of this constantly are being 
changed, so that in addition to all of these other quali- 
ties, the successful section manager must possess an 
alert mind. The importance of his work may be 
visualized to some slight extent at least by the manual 
which is prepared for his guidance. This is a loose- 
leaf book of some fifty closely printed pages , the 
number varying according to the changes in the store 
system which are made from time to time. Just to 
give you a slight idea of what this captain of a mer- 
chandising army has upon his mind, consider that under 
the division entitled "Section Managers' Daily Duties" 
there are forty-six different items, and under "Miscel- 
laneous Duties" thirteen. Moreover, he must have at 
his instant command all the technical procedure regard- 
ing transactions and forms, refunds, complaints, trans- 
fers, employees' shopping, the Internal Revenue Law, 
accidents, and then some more. I submit this as a job 
requiring all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy! 

Salesmanship is the thing that really made R. H. 
Macy & Company and it therefore is patent that they 
should consider the actual sellers of their goods as the 
very backbone of their organization. In another 
place it is related how, in the department of training, 
employees are taught to sell, and in another something 
of the working out of the psychology of the customer 
and the salesclerk. Education counts. It helps to 
make the salesclerk a vital factor of the store 
organization. 

Macy policy sees to it that the clerk is, in so far as it 



Organization in a Modern Store 127 

is possible, kept interested in his or her work. There 
are, as we have already begun to understand, as few 
rules governing their conduct, dress and liberties as are 
consistent with the smooth, economical operation of the 
business. On the other hand, there is all possible 
encouragement for them to become familiar and even 
expert with the things that they sell. In many of the 
departments special booklets have been prepared as 
aids in selling the particular line of merchandise car- 
ried. That for the stationery department, for instance, 
covers: Paper, with its history from the earliest times, 
its manufacture, sizes and characteristics 5 engraving, 
with a full description of the processes connected there- 
with} fountain-pens and their manufacture 5 desk acces- 
sories, commercial stationery and the like. Ambition 
to excel in salesmanship is further stimulated by taking 
clerks through factories where their lines are made, and 
by exhibiting motion pictures of the manufacturing of 
these goods. 

Here, then, is the store's most direct contact with its 
patrons. There are others, however, to be classed as 
at least fairly direct. Take that big and comfortable 
restaurant up on the eighth floor. It is one of the real 
landmark's among eating-places of New York, a world 
city of good eating. 

Its own magnitude may easily be guessed from the 
fact that in a single business day it feeds more people 
than almost if not any other in the town. Translated 
into cold figures this means that there is an average of 
twenty-five hundred lunches bought by customers each 
day that the store is open; with a maximum on 



128 The Romance of a Great Store 

extremely busy days reaching as high as five thousand. 
Figures are impressive. Yet these do not include 
either afternoon teas or late breakfasts for both of 
which there is a considerable clientele. 

To serve these hungry folk who come to Macy's 
there are two hundred waitresses, buss-boys and other 
employees upon the floor, besides fifty in the general 
kitchen, twenty in the bakery and eight in the ice cream 
factory. And if you still try to doubt that this 
restaurant is not of itself a real business and one to be 
reckoned with, consider that in the course of an average 
year its patrons consume — among other things — two 
thousand barrels of flour, fifty-two tons of sugar, seven 
hundred and fifty thousand eggs, ninety-three thousand 
six hundred pounds of butter, two thousand bags of 
potatoes, and nearly half a million quarts of ice cream. 
This latter item, however, covers the ice cream used at 
the soda fountain and in the employees 5 and men's club 
restaurants. 

The employees' lunchroom — conducted on the cafe- 
teria plan — serves four thousand men and women each 
working day. It provides tasty and wholesome food 
at a cost that makes it entirely possible to eat to reple- 
tion for twenty cents or less. Soups, for instance, are 
three cents a portion, and meat dishes six, while other 
items, such as sandwiches, vegetables, desserts and the 
like are correspondingly low. 

Nor is this luncheon the sole restaurant resource of 
the employees within this institution. In the men's 
club nearly a thousand more of the Macy family eat 
their midday meal each day} and eat very well indeed. 



Organization in a Modern Store 129 

Here the meal is served at a flat rate: at the uniform 
and moderate cost of thirty cents. 

Under the same general management direction (the 
third assistant general manager) as the restaurant is 
the store's supply department — not different very much 
from the supply department of a big railroad or manu- 
facturing unit — which supplies everything for its con- 
sumption, from coal to string ; the manufacturing 
departments in which are produced glass, mattresses, 
printing, engraving, custom-made shirts, millinery, 
picture frames and paper novelties ; the candy factory 
over near Tenth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street, which 
completely fills a big modern six-story building; the 
telephone service; and the so-called public service 
department. 

These last facilities command our attention for a 
passing moment. The telephone is, of course, the 
nerve-system of the Macy organization; nothing else. 
Its chief ganglion is a far-reaching switchboard on 
which little lights twinkle on and off and at which at a 
single relay sit nine competent operators in addition to 
a corps of inspectors and supervisors. The big board, 
from which run fifty-nine trunk-wires to the neighbor- 
ing Fitzroy exchange, is none too large. Year in and 
year out it handles an average of nine thousand calls a 

! day. And in the Christmas season this number easily 

' is doubled and trebled. 

The public service department means exactly what 
it is called. It is at the service of the public. In 

I concrete form it is a free information bureau, where 

' theater seats and railroad and Pullman tickets may be 



130 The Romance of a Great Store 

purchased at face value — and not one cent beyond, 
not even the usual moderate fifty-cent advance of 
the hotel agencies — where astute and marvelously 
informed young men and women, with a miniature 
library of reference books at their immediate command, 
stand ready and willing to answer all the reasonable 
questions that may be thrust at them. To it is added a 
postal office, a telegraph office and public telephones 
for both local and long distance service. 

The third assistant general manager of the store also 
has within his bailiwick the important department of 
mail orders and adjustments. Although in the tech- 
nical sense of the word Macy's today has no mail order 
department — having been forced to abandon its once 
promising beginning along this line because of a sheer 
lack of room in which to handle it — the store each year 
actually receives thousands of orders for its goods by 
mail, from folk who, for one reason or another, find 
it inconvenient to visit it. These are received and 
systematically handled in this very department. Under 
its adjustment division comes the extremely interesting 
bureau of investigation, which concerns itself with all 
complaints, and the correspondence bureau, which 
handles more than ninety-five per cent, of the mail of 
the house. 

It requires no particular keenness of imagination to 
see that, even with complaints reduced to a minimum 
and letter-writing and handling to a fine science, there 
is an infinite amount of detail in these two departments 
alone — detail that reaches into every part of the store 



Organization in a Modern Store 131 

and that necessitates a clever combination of system 
and diplomacy. 

The exposition of the workings of the Macy organi- 
zation is yet to lead us into other chapters in which 
various separate subjects of interest will be treated at 
greater length than herej but now is the time and place 
to focus our attention upon one of the small, but 
extremely important, departments that works unseen — 
but not unf elt — behind the scenes. It is known as the 
comparison department and the work that it does is of 
vast importance in the operation of the store. Its 
functions are unending — and continuous. Macy's 
policy of underselling its competitors is an unhalting 
one. 

I have before me a Macy advertisement from a New 
York newspaper of recent date. In a conspicuous 
place in it there is a card which says: "For sixty-two 
years we have sold dependable merchandise at lowest 
in the city prices. We are doing so now and shall 
continue to do so." This was published at a time when 
the recent reaction from the extremely high prices of 
the war period already had begun to set in; and yet 
this was the big store's sole acknowledgment of the 
deflation sentiment — to say nothing of hysteria — whicK 
was sweeping the town. Its competitors had been 
offering their wares at reductions of from twenty to 
fifty per cent, from their topmost prices, but, serene 
and secure in the knowledge that its policy in selling 
had been consistently adhered to, Macy's only reiterated 
that its prices would continue to be the lowest in the 
city — quality for quality. 



132 The Romance of a Great Store 

To hold fast to this policy, through thick and thin, 
has not always been easy. Macy's has fought some 
royal battles in its behalf — yet not so much because it 
was a policy as because with the big store in Herald 
Square it has become a principle of the most funda- 
mental sort. 

More than twenty years ago the principle became 
extremely difficult to maintain, because of the growing 
tendency of the proprietors of articles, so patented or 
copyrighted as to make their imitation practically impos- 
sible, to attempt to fix their final retail sales price. 
It no longer became the mere question of whether 
Macy's or any other store would have the right to 
undersell its competitors 5 it became the fundamental 
question of whether the great centuries-old open market 
of the world could continue to remain an open market, 
in the interest of the consumer; and not a closed 
market, in the interest of the producer. To maintain 
the first of these positions, in behalf of its patrons, 
Macy's entered upon and won, almost single-handed, 
one of the notable legal battles in the history of this 
country. 

As far back as 1901 — if you are a stickler for exact 
dates — this whole question of price maintenance became 
an acute issue with Macy's. It came to pass that when 
the prominent publishers of America formed an asso- 
ciation, one prime purpose of which was to fix the 
prices at which their books would sell at retail, the 
store quickly saw that if this trust agreement was per- 
mitted to stand unchallenged, its cardinal principle of 
underselling its competitors, would have to be sacrificed. 



Organization in a Modern Store 133 

Macy's did not propose to make such a sacrifice — to 
permit its customers to be sacrificed — without a protest. 
And such a protest it prepared to make. 

Isidor Straus, then the head of the business, sat in 
the office of his friend and counsel, Edmond E. Wise, 
in a downtown office. Mr. Wise put the thing frankly 
and without equivocation before his client. He said 
that it would be a hard legal fight, no doubt of that, 
but that a great principle was at stake j the keen mind 
of the lawyer was convinced of the economic fallacy of 
the position of the publishers' association. 

Quietly Mr. Straus told his attorney to go ahead. 
He said that he would fight the fight, to the last ditch. 
No expense was to be spared. The case would be 
carried, if necessary, in every instance to the highest 
court of appeal. 

Accordingly, Mr. Wise prepared a suit against the 
American Publishers' Association which holds the 
record for appeal in the history of jurisprudence in this 
country. Three times it went up to the Court of 
Appeals of the State of New York} finally, after nine 
years of legal battle, it was carried to the United States 
Supreme Court, which, after due deliberation, decided 
every point in favor of R. H. Macy & Company. 

That was in December, 1913. Early in the follow- 
ing May the firm had the satisfaction of having the 
publishers hand over a check on the Park National 
Bank for $140,000. This sum represented a settle- 
ment for the difficulties that Macy's had had to 
undergo for more than a dozen years past in get- 
ting stock for its book department. Ofttimes it was 



134 The Romance of a Great Store 

necessary to follow devious paths indeed to gain this 
end — and still hold fast to the fundamental under- 
selling policy of the store. Sometimes the store had 
to go so far as to send to other retail stores to buy a 
certain volume, at the full retail price, and then resell 
it to its patrons, at its customary ten per cent, off the 
price of the store at which it had just purchased it. 
So much if you please for the expense of standing by a 
principle! 

A short time after this signal victory of Macy's, 
certain large manufacturers of patented articles, who 
for a time had sustained in the lower courts their claim 
to a fixed retail price standard, sought definitely to 
control Macy retail prices upon their products. Macy's, 
however, defied them, and the Victor Talking Machine 
Company, one of the leading adherents of price main- 
tenance, brought an action in the United States courts 
to compel Macy's adherence to the rules for resale at 
a certain price. Again there was a royal battle and 
again Macy's triumphed signally, for on final appeal, 
the United States Supreme Court again decided in favor 
of the store in Herald Square, on every one of its con- 
tentions. Macy's then retaliated and brought suit 
against the Victor Company, under the Sherman Law. 
In a bitterly contested action, which culminated in one 
of the longest trials before a jury on record — consum- 
ing more than ten weeks — Macy's recovered a judg- 
ment of $150,000, and a counsel fee of $3 5,000 j 
after which no paths apparently were left open to the 
manufacturers who sought to maintain the retail prices 



Organization in a Modern Store 135 

that suited them best. Court decisions seemingly 
blocked all possible pathways. 

One path did remain, however — legislation. Effort 
was made to pass a measure down at Washington to 
permit and sustain retail price maintenance, which in 
reality meant the emasculation of the Supreme Court's 
decisions. When that measure came to a hearing before 
the Interstate Commerce Committee of the House one 
of the Macy partners, accompanied by Mr. Wise, the 
store's counsel, and Mr. E. A. Filene, the well-known 
Boston merchant, came before it in opposition. Up 
almost to that hour, Macy's had gone it alone. Now 
the attention of the country was f ocussed upon its fight 
and the National Retail Dry Goods Association came in 
with both its sympathy and its active co-operation — 
hence the appearance of Mr. Filene, who made a most 
excellent argument in support of the Macy contention. 

It was shown definitely to the members of this House 
committee that many, if not all, branded and patented 
articles took a retail profit of from fifty to seventy-five 
per cent. The member of the Macy firm took a watch 
nationally advertised at $2.50 and duplicated it with a 
watch which his store sold at sixty-five cents, going so 
far as to take the two watches apart so as to show con- 
clusively that the one was quite as good as the other. 
Certain other commodities went under similarly critical 
analyses. When the hearing was completed, the com- 
mittee laughed the bill out of court. Since then the 
question of price maintenance by the original producer 
has been permitted to drop. Macy's had won its hard- 
fought fight} won it cleanly and honestly. By per- 



136 The Romance of a Great Store 

f ormance it had made good its statements that it pro- 
posed wherever it was humanly possible to undersell 
its competitors. That was no idle phrase. 

It is indeed one thing to make a statement — whether 
in print or by word of mouth — and another and oft- 
times a far more difficult thing to make good that state- 
ment by performance. No one knows this better than 
Macy's. Having set down such a definite and distinct 
statement it must be prepared to make good. It must 
be so covered and protected at every possible point that 
if challenged it can give a good account of itself. In 
fact, challenges come in every day — they have been 
coming in every day for a good many years now — and 
the house continues to make good its statement will- 
ingly — even joyfully. Here it is, then, that the 
comparison department functions j here it is that the 
original fundamental policy of Rowland H. Macy — to 
buy and sell only for cash — strictly adhered to during 
the sixty-four years' life of the business — makes it 
possible for the house to make good. 

How, then, is it done? 

The answer is easy. 

Suppose, if you will, that Smith, Brown & Jones are 
having a special sale of Mother Hubbard wrappers. 
There are advertised as their regular $4.97 stock, 
marked down (at a heartbreaking sacrifice) to $3.79. 
Manifestly, it is up to R. H. Macy & Company to sell 
the same quality of Mother Hubbard for less than 
$3.79, if they are to live up to their oft-stated policy. 
It is quite as patent that Macy's must know just what 



Organization in a Modem Store 137 

kind of wrappers Smith, Brown & Jones are selling, if 
it is to compete on an exact basis. Nothing simpler. 
One of the Macy staff of shoppers is hurried forthwith 
to the scene of the bargain and, purchasing one of the 
garments, brings it back post-haste to the Macy com- 
parison department. Furthermore, it is in this depart- 
ment by ten o'clock of the morning of the sale. It is 
then matched as closely as possible with a Mother 
Hubbard from the Macy stock, and the two garments 
compared, point by point. If, after careful examina- 
tion, it is found that Macy's is charging more, or even 
the same price, for equal quality, then its prices are 
immediately marked down to a figure at least six per 
cent, lower than that advertised by the other store. 
And this, mind you, is not an exceptional performance 
but a daily procedure in the carrying out of which an 
exceptionally alert woman manager and twenty expert 
shoppers are constantly kept busy. 

If you make inquiry regarding the ins and outs of 
this remarkable policy you will find that it is far 
broader than you may have imagined. Here, again, is 
proof of the pudding. It is a typical letter, received 
from a customer and copied verbatim, with only the 
name left out: 

November 12, 1920. 
R. H. Macy & Co., 

New York City. 
Dear Sirs: 

I purchased a banjo clock at $13.89 from you on Tuesday. 
Yesterday I saw the same clock, with same works, etc., identical 

in every way, at 's, for $11.25. Now, inasmuch as you 

claim that you sell goods at the very lowest figure, I think that 
is too much difference in price to overlook. I trust that I shall 






138 The Romance of a Great Store 

receive your check for the difference in the amount, otherwise 
please call for the clock at once. I purchased clock in the 
basement. 

Yours very truly, 



This letter was received by the store and acknowl- 
edged that very day. It then was turned over to the 
comparison department, from which a shopper was 
despatched to the store at which the customer claimed 
to have seen the clock for less money. The shopper 
reported that the claim was correct, and a check was 
immediately forwarded to the customer for the differ- 
ence between the price which she paid for the clock and 
six per cent, less than the other store's price for it. 
Nor did the matter end there. All this kind of clocks 
in the basement were at once repriced to conform to the 
adjustment made with the customer. 

There are, too, the occasional tests made by customers 
who, while they are not dissatisfied, cannot believe that 
the low-price policy can be consistently carried out. 
As an example, this half -jocular letter: 

November 15, 1920. 
R. H. Macy & Company, 

Broadway & 34th Street, 
New York. 
Gentlemen : 

Lest you regard this as a complaint from an ordinary 22 
calibre chronic kicker let me say in the first place that I merely 
want to see to what extent you will make good on your brazen 
claim to sell goods at a lower price than other stores. Now then : 
On November 10th, I purchased a toy "cash register" bank 
in your toy department for $1.98. (I want the kid to learn 
frugality better than I did.) On November 14th my wife saw 
the same toy at Hahne's in Newark, N. J., for exactly the same 



Organization in a Modem Store 139 

price. So far, so good. It was worth it. But, Mr. Macy, you 
said your prices were less. 

Besides, I have an account at Hahne's. By the time I 
would have needed to pay for that bank there would have been 
enough in it to settle the bill. 

Here is your chance, but I'm from Missouri. 

Yours, 



The answer to this complaint was prompt and to the 
point. It reads: 

r. H. macy & CO. 
Herald Square, New York 

December 4, 1920. 
Mr. 



Dear Sir: 

We acknowledge your letter of November 24th, with regard 
to a toy-bank, which you purchased from us for $1.98. We 
have investigated your complaint and find, as you state, 
Hahne & Co. in Newark are selling this article at the same price 
at which you purchased it from us. Our price on these banks is 
now $1.89, in keeping with our claim that we sell dependable 
merchandise for "lowest-in-the-city" prices. 

We appreciate your courtesy in calling this matter to our 
attention and also for the opportunity to demonstrate the 
upholding of our policy. A refund of nine cents in stamps is 
enclosed. 

Yours very truly, 
(Signed) R. H. Macy & Co. 

Mgr. 

Bureau of Mail Order and Adjustment. 

Of course this complaint was trivial, the sum in- 
volved small, and Macy's must quickly have realized 
that the man who wrote the letter was not particularly 
serious. Yet that made no difference. The matter 
was adjusted; even though the process of adjustment 



140 The Romance of a Great Store 

involved a shopper's trip to Newark and considerable 
clerical work — in all several times the cost of the tiny 
bank. Yet the matter was adjusted and all the toy- 
banks of that kind were at once reduced in price, to say 
nothing of a satisfied patron made for the store. 

There is another sort of complaint that, at times, 
keeps the comparison department pretty busy. Women 
frequently will stop at a counter in the store, examine 
an article and then exclaim: 

"Hm-m — $6.74 for that! Why, I saw the same 
thing today at Jinx, Bobb & Company's for $5.90." 

A mere passing comment which, in the old days of 
merchandising, might easily have been ignored. In 
Macy's it is not ignored. The clerk who hears this 
remark makes a note of it and sends through to the 
comparison department what is technically known as a 
customer's complaint. Immediate investigation is 
made, the prices checked up, and, if the casual shopper 
is right, Macy's prices are at once readjusted to the six 
per cent, below the competitor's charges. It has been 
found, however, that nearly ninety per cent, of this 
sort of complaints are incorrect. Two articles, in 
separate stores, may look so nearly alike that a casual 
inspection will not reveal any difference, and, therefore, 
competing goods must often be subjected to expert 
examination and even to analysis. A magnifying glass 
is used to count the threads in a fabric; woolens are 
boiled in chemical solutions to determine whether there 
is any adulteration; and cotton goods, such as sheets 
and pillow cases, are weighed, washed and weighed 



Organization in a Modern Store 141 

again to ascertain to what extent they are loaded. For 
Macy's is just to itself, as well as to the public. 

As has been indicated already, there are some things 
that the store as a matter of policy does not sell — 
pianos, chief of all. But that does not mean that there 
is, in the minds of its managers, the slightest excuse for 
its shelves not holding the things that it ought to sell. 
A large difference, this, and one which is constantly 
being checked by members of the shopping staff of the 
comparison department — going through its floors and 
inquiring in the various departments for goods for 
which there is little ordinary demand, and so a con- 
siderable likelihood of their not being found in stock. 
If an article requested is not found in stock, the shopper 
immediately buys something else — so as to get the 
number of the salesclerk. Then a report is made to 
the department buyer in order that he may see whether 
or not the clerk has followed up the inquiry. 

Incidentally, the shopper's report upon this entire 
transaction takes into account all the details regarding 
the manner in which the sales are handled and even 
notes the speed with which the parcel is wrapped and 
the change returned. It is not a spying system, but 
part of the store's honest effort to keep its efficiency at 
the highest notch. Naturally the shoppers of its com- 
parison department are not known as such to its sales- 
force — for this reason the personnel of the corps must 
be under constant change — and it is equally evident 
that their anonymity is carefully preserved in their 
dealings with other stores. They are all well-bred 



142 The Romance of a Great Store 

young women, ranging in type from the flapper to the 
matron, and each is so carefully trained to act her part 
that it is quite impossible to distinguish them from the 
store's bona fide shoppers. 

Another of their duties is to report upon the speed of 
Macy deliveries. Once a month, at a certain pre- 
arranged time of day, a similar purchase is made at each 
of the largest stores in the city, including Macy's. 
These are all ordered sent to the same address and a 
record is made of the length of time it takes each to 
arrive. In the report that is finally made of the test 
details are included showing the manner in which all the 
packages are wrapped in order that Macy service may 
at all times be held up at least to the standard of its 
competitors. 

In the highly scientific machine of modern business, 
the test is as valuable as in other machines. I have 
stood in a great sugar refinery and watched the work- 
men from time to time draw off tiny phials of the 
sweetish fluid in order that they might show under 
laboratory examination that the machine was function- 
ing at its highest point. And so are the tiny phials of 
Macy service drawn from the machine. If they show 
that, even in the slightest degree, the great machine of 
retail merchandising is functioning below its highest 
efficiency, it becomes the immediate business of the 
management to correct the loss. 

"I tell my people not to come to me with reports that 
everything is going well," says its general manager, 
"I only want to know when things begin to slip. Then 
it is my job to set them straight once again." 



Organization in a Modern Store 143 

One thing more, before we are quite done with this 
sketch of the organization of a great merchandising 
institution. It is, in this case, a most important thing: 

With the credit system in force in nearly, if not 
quite, every other large store in the New York metro- 
politan district, Macy's for years has had to encounter 
a considerable sentiment against its policy of doing a 
cash business only. For there always has been a desir- 
able class of trade represented by customers who, for 
one reason or another, find it most inconvenient to pay 
their bills monthly — people whose means and credit are 
unimpeachable. At one time it looked as if R. H. 
Macy & Company would either have to forego their 
custom or else make exceptions to their long established 
rule. The former they could do; the latter they 
would not. But — 

Out of this very need for furnishing customers with 
the convenience of some sort of a charge account grew 
a great Macy specialty — the depositors' account depart- 
ment which, while making no concessions to the store's 
rock-ribbed principle of selling for cash, solved a very 
great problem in its touch with its public. It turned 
the costly credit privilege into an asset both for the 
customer and for the store. The very thought was 
revolutionary! What, ask a customer to pay in 
advance; to have money on deposit with R. H. Macy & 
Company, private bankers, to pay for normal purchases 
for a whole thirty days to come! It couldn't be done. 
New York would never, never stand for it. Every 
one outside of the store was sure that it never could be 
done. And a good many inside, as well. Yet the 



144 The Romance of a Great Store 

thing deemed impossible has come to pass. The idea 
was sound. The plan today is successful, even beyond 
the dreams of its promoters. With fifteen thousand 
depositors, its total deposits — money placed into the 
store to be drawn against solely for merchandise pur- 
chases — have reached as high as $2,750,000 at a single 
time. 

Interest at four per cent, annually is paid upon these 
deposits, so that the customer's money does not lie idle 
in the Macy till. Moreover, the money may be with- 
drawn at any time, and without previous notice being 
given. Further than this, it has been a custom — not, 
however, to be considered invariable — to pay a bonus 
of two per cent, on net sales charged to the depositors' 
account department throughout the year. Compare 
the thrill of receiving a bonus check from your depart- 
ment-store, instead of a bill for dead horses! 

It has been estimated that in some of New York's 
most representative and most elegant department-stores 
something like eighty-five per cent, of all retail trans- 
actions are upon the credit accounts. Assuming even 
that all of these accounts are promptly collectible — or 
collectible at all — the expense of the machinery of their 
collection becomes no small item in store management 
cost. This item Macy's saves — entirely and com- 
pletely. And so, to no small extent, the store justifies 
itself in that other rigid rule — the pricing of its mer- 
chandise at a uniform rating of six per cent, less than 
that of its competitors. Upon this thought, alone, a 
whole book might be written. 



III. Buying to Sell 

UP the broad valley of the Euphrates a caravan 
comes toiling upon its way. It is fearfully hotj 
frightfully dusty. For it has come to mid-September j 
the rains are long weeks gonej and with the crops har- 
vested, even the sails of the great mills that pump the 
irrigation canals full are stilled. The time of great 
heat and of little work. But still the caravan — the 
long, attenuated file of horses and camels must press on. 
Ahead is Bagdad, that self-same ancient Bagdad 
which three thousand years ago was the commercial 
capital of the world. Through the heat waves and the 
blinding dust, the trained eyes of the Moslem can see 
the sun touching the gilded minarets and towers of her 
great mosques. Bagdad ahead. And at Bagdad the 
market-places which have stood unchanged for tens of 
centuries. Save that in recent years there have come 
to them these Americans — these shrewd agents of a 
little known folk, these rug-buyers of a far-away land 
of which they spin such fascinating tales. Tales far 
too fascinating ever to be believable. Yet Allah keeps 
his own accounting. 

In the foyer of a lovely new home in newest New 
York a Persian rug is being spread for the first time. 

145 



146 The Romance of a Great Store 

Its owner dilates with pride upon his purchase j shows 
those roundabout him the symbolism of its rarely 
delicate design j even to the tiny fault purposely woven 
into the creation by its maker to show in his humble 
fashion that only Allah may be faultless. 

A great French city 5 this Lyons, by the bank of the 
lovely Rhone. For two centuries or even more its 
tireless looms have spun the rarest silk fabrics of the 
world. Nearby there is a little French village. Were 
I to put its name upon these pages, it would mean 
nothing to you. Yet out from it there comes a lace, so 
rare, so delicate, that one well may marvel at the human 
patience and the human ingenuity that conceived it. 
The silk comes to America, straight to the chief city of 
the Americas} so do the laces; and so in a short time 
will come once again the wondrous cotton weaves of 
Lille and of Cambrai — and will come as a tragic re- 
minder of the five fearful years that were. 

In the hot depths of a South African mine, negroes, 
stripped to their very waists, are toiling to bring forth 
the rarest precious stones that the world has ever 
known. In the fearfully cold blasts of the far North, 
facing monotonous glaring miles of lonely ice and 
snow, trappers are after the seal and the mink. Why? 
In order that milady, of New York, may sweep into 
her red-lined box at the Opera, a queen in dress, as well 
as in looks and in poise. 

From the mine and from the ice-floes to her neck, 
and back a mighty process has been undergone. The 



Buying to Sell 147 

great multiplex machine of merchandising has accom- 
plished the process. A thousand other ones as well. 
Herald Square sits not alone between the East River 
and the North, between the Battery and the Harlem, 
between five populous boroughs of the great New York, 
not alone between the four million other folk who 
dwell within fifty miles of her ancient City Hall, but 
between the shoe factories of Lynn, the cotton mills of 
Lowell and of the Carolinas, the woolen factories of 
the Scots and the nearer ones of Lawrence, the paper 
mills of the Berkshires, the porcelain kilns of Pennsyl- 
vania, between a thousand other manufacturing indus- 
tries, both very great and very small, as well. Into 
Herald Square — into the red-brick edifice upon the 
westerly side of Herald Square and reaching all the 
way on Broadway from Thirty-fourth to Thirty-fifth 
Streets — all of these pour a goodly portion of their 
products. In turn, these are poured by the big red- 
brick store into the pockets and the homes of its tens 
of thousands of patrons. 

A mighty business this; and, as we shall presently 
see, a business made up of many little businesses. 
Merchandising, financing, transportation j each has 
played its own great part in the bringing of that silk 
sock upon your foot or the felt that you wear upon 
your head. Each has co-operated; each has correlated 
its effort. There are few accidents in modern business. 
Rule-o'-thumb has stepped out of its back-door. In 
its place have come cool calculation, steady planning, 
scientific investigation. If modern merchandising has 
tricks, these are they. And they are the tricks that win. 



148 The Romance of a Great Store 

In our last chapter we pictured R. H. Macy & 
Company as a machine of salesmanship. Now I should 
like to change the film upon the screen. I should like 
to show you Macy's as a machine of buying. Ob- 
viously one cannot sell, without first buying. Buying 
must at all times precede selling, while to meet compe- 
tition and still sell goods at a profit, the keenest sort of 
shrewd merchandising must be used in purchasing. 
Your buyer must be no less a salesman than he who 
6tands behind the retail counters and, what is more to 
the point, he must constantly keep his finger upon the 
pulse of the market. Which means, in turn, that he 
must not for a day or an hour lose his touch with manu- 
facturing and financial conditions — to say nothing of 
the changeable public taste. 

For the one hundred and eighteen different depart- 
ments of the Macy's of today there are now sixty-nine 
buyers j the majority of them women. This last is not 
surprising when one comes to consider that by far the 
larger percentage of the department-store's customers 
are of the gentler sex. Women know how to buy for 
women — or should know. How foolish indeed would 
be the merchant prince of the New York of this day 
who would not instantly say "yes" to the assertion that 
feminine taste in buying is the one thing with which his 
store absolutely could not dispense. So the woman 
buyer in our city stores is so much an accepted fact as to 
call today for little special comment, save possibly to 
add that in no store outside of Macy's has she come 
more completely into her own. The buyer's job 
covets her. And she covets the buyer's job. Well she 



Buying to Sell 149 

may. For it is a job well worth coveting — in inde- 
pendence, in opportunity and in salary. 

In almost every case a buyer comes to the job from 
retail experience — although occasionally a knowledge 
of wholesale selling develops the required skill. In 
nine cases out of ten, however, he or she rises to the 
important little office on the seventh floor from the 
salesf orce upon the retail floors beneath. From sales- 
clerk he — or as we have just learned, usually she — is 
promoted to "head of stock," which is the title of the 
head clerk in a department having three or four or 
more clerks. This promotion comes from a superior 
knowledge of the stock, yet not from that alone: the 
clerk must have executive ability. An agreeable tem- 
perament is also a necessary ingredient to the potion of 
promotion. 

To the position of -assistant buyer is the next and 
logical promotion for the ambitious and successful 
"head of stock." After this should come the step to 
the big job — which steadily grows bigger — of buyer, 
or as the Macy store prefers to call it, department 
manager. 

Department managers do no actual selling. They 
now have graduated from that. Yet none the less are 
they salesmen — in more than a little truth, super- 
salesmen. For not only must they know what to buy — 
and how to buy it at the most favorable price — but they 
are equally responsible for knowing what to do with 
their purchases, once made. They are the merchants 
of the departments; accountable for the salability of 
their stock. It is very much their concern whether 



150 The Romance of a Great Store 

those departments show a profit or a loss. Little stores 
within a big store. A big store made up of more than 
a hundred little stores. 

As we have seen, it is not an uncommon custom for 
some department-stores to rent out or even to sell the 
privilege of many, if not all of its little stores. 
Macy's — in recent years at least — has not followed this 
policy. It has found that its own best organization 
comes from keeping the department as a unit; a pretty 
distinct and important unit, right up close to the very 
top of the business, where its three partners are 
specialists in merchandising; and passing proud of that. 

The foundation of all successful buying is built of 
the bricks of sales knowledge laid in the mortar of good 
judgment. It is squared up by a sixth sense that has 
no name — yet a qualification which, by its presence or 
its absence, makes or unmakes a buyer's value. In its 
various branches, however, this unnamed sense is 
required, to a varying degree, perhaps, least of all in 
the purchasing of staple goods. 

For the sake of a more convenient understanding, 
let us begin by classifying the various needs of the 
insatiable Macy's into three major divisions: We shall 
put down staples, as the first of these; luxuries, as the 
second; and novelties, as the third. Under staples we 
shall include notions, cotton goods (such as sheets, 
pillow-cases and muslins) and, in general, the absolute 
necessities of life, including wearing apparel of the 
commoner varieties, household articles and the like. 
These are in constant purchase almost every day of the 



Buying to Sell 151 

year. Take, for instance, that heterogeneous collec- 
tion of articles, grouped under the generic and whimsi- 
cal head of notions. There is thread of all kinds, there 
are hooks-and-eyes, snap-fasteners, hair-nets, darners, 
button-hooks, tape-measures and what all not more — 
far be it from me even to attempt to mention the more 
than four thousand separate items that must be con- 
stantly carried in the notion departments. 

For all of these there is a huge daily demand, while 
a month's supply of any of them is all that can, as a 
rule, be conveniently handled in the store. It must 
be patent that, as there is never an equal demand for 
these small but essential articles, the buyers must be 
placing constant orders for them. So it is with every- 
thing else that people must have — irrespective of tastes, 
wealth or the season of the year — and the number of 
the list is legion. 

Therefore, the buyer of staples does not depend so 
much upon the sixth sense as upon common sense. He 
must have plenty for the latter, however, and it is sure 
to be kept working on a fairly even basis throughout 
the entire year. 

In the category of the luxuries are included such 
articles as jewelry, musical instruments, Oriental rugs, 
paintings, fine bric-a-brac and the like. Clearly the 
buyer in this branch must possess real taste and dis- 
crimination in addition to commercial ability, in order 
to be able to purvey these properly to the public. He 
handles goods which have to be bought by people who 
have already purchased the necessities of life — the buy- 
ing of luxuries involves the spending of the public's 



152 The Romance of a Great Store 

surplus and so this division of the work is at all times 
attended with great or less hazard. 

But the real hazards, the real necessity for that sixth 
sense, which I just mentioned, the hardest and most 
nerve-racking buyer's job, comes in the purchase of 
those goods grouped under the common title of 
novelties. As one of the members of the Macy's 
merchandise council once observed, the departments 
devoted to staples sell what the people want, while 
those devoted to novelties make the people want what 
they have to sell. And this last is quite true of the 
luxuries, as well. 

Here, incidentally, is a very curious fact about mer- 
chandise: A staple is not a constant thing. In one 
department it is what everybody wants and in another 
it becomes a novelty. For instance, a cotton pillow- 
case selling for, let us say, a dollar, is a staple j while 
another pillow-case, of linen this time, embroidered 
with an old English initial, hand hemstitched and 
edged with lace — we hesitate to guess at its cost — is a 
decided novelty, in the understanding of the store, at 
any rate. It also may be classed as a luxury. 

Styles, fads, exclusive designs and seasons determine* 
the work of the buyer of novelties. The job is one 
that requires quick decisions. The staple buyer can 
"play safe," but the buyer of novelties who pursued 
the policy soon would find himself in the rear of the 
procession. Nor can he afford to make mistakes, for 
they may be costly indeed to the house that he repre- 
sents. There is, in consequence, a greater demand on 
his nerve, his ingenuity and his imagination than you 



Buying to Sell 153 

find in other classes of buyers. He must circulate 
where there are people — at the theaters, country clubs, 
restaurants, churches, in Fifth Avenue — and he must 
keep his ear to the ground and both eyes wide open. 
Consequently, when it is reported in the Sunday paper 
that the women of Paris have taken up the fad of 
wearing jeweled nose-rings, he must see that New 
York's women of fashion may have the same oppor- 
tunity of expressing their individuality, by visiting 
Macy's jewelry department. 

This, of course, is rank exaggeration, but it indicates 
what the novelty buyer aims at. And surprisingly 
often he hits the mark. 

In such a huge establishment it is but natural that the 
reception hall outside the buying offices should be 
crowded most of the time. Mahomet oftimes goes 
to the mountain — or sends a representative to it to buy 
some of its goods — yet more often the mountain comes 
to Mahomet. And so, I am told, for five days a 
week — Saturdays being generally recognized as a 
closed day for buying — an average of from four hun- 
dred to six hundred and fifty salesmen a day visit the 
buying headquarters on the seventh floor of the store. 
Taking into consideration the fact that the goods pur- 
chased are paid for in cash within ten days of their 
delivery, these headquarters are most popular with the 
emissaries of manufacturers and wholesale houses. 
Added to this is the uniform policy of courtesy to 
salesmen, which has been stated by the company in its 
precise fashion: 



154 The Romance of a Great Store 

"We have held, as far as within our power, the pre- 
cept of which our late head, Isidor Straus, was a living 
personification — that business may be conducted be- 
tween merchants who are gentlemen, in a manner 
profitable to both." 

It is one thing to write a thing of this sort. It is 
another to live strictly up to it, day in and day out. 
But that Macy's does live up to this high-set principle 
of its behind-the-scenes conduct is evidenced by the 
unsought testimony of a manufacturer who sought for 
the first time to do business with it. 

This man had made one of the mistakes into which 
all manufacturers are apt to fall, sooner or later. He 
had overproduced. And while, heretofore, his 
product had been chiefly, if not solely, sold in high- 
priced novelty shops he now needed an establishment 
of great turnover to help him out in his dilemma. 
Macy's came at once into his mind. The old house is 
indeed advertised by its loving friends. He went to it 
at once \ by means of the special elevator, found his 
way, along with several hundred other salesmen, to the 
sample and buying rooms upon the seventh floor. 

A young woman at the door received his card and, 
without delay, told him that he could see the buyer of 
the department which would naturally handle his 
product, upon the morrow j at any time before eleven, 
but under no circumstances later than noon. Better 
still, she would make a definite appointment for him 
for the next morning. Mr. Manufacturer chose this 
last course. And at the very moment of the appointed 
time was ushered into the buyer's little individual 



Buying to Sell 155 

room. Contact was established quickly. The buyer 
already knew of Mr. Manufacturer's line, regretted that 
they had not done business together a long time before. 
He inspected the proffered samples, quickly and with 
a shrewd and practiced eyej finally called into the little 
room two members of the salesf orce from the depart- 
ment down upon the ground floor. They agreed with 
him as to the salability of the product. He turned 
toward the manufacturer. 

"Please bring your stock to No. — Madison Avenue 
next Tuesday afternoon, at half-past two." 

Why Madison Avenue? The manufacturer was per- 
plexed as he descended to the street once again. The 
curiosity was relieved on Tuesday, however, when he 
and his abundant goods were ushered into a big and 
sunlit room. 

"We shall not be subject to any interruption here," 
said Macy's buyer. 

And so they were not. For two hours the buyer and 
two of his assistants went carefully over the stock, then 
withdrew for a short conference amongst themselves. 
When they returned they handed Mr. Manufacturer a 
card. It read after this fashion: 



CASH 

The entire lot 
$ 



156 The Romance of a Great Store 

"The figure on that card, with the word 'cash' heavily 
underscored was just one hundred dollars in excess of 
my minimum," said the manufacturer afterwards, in 
discussing the incident. "I paused a moment and then 
said: 'Gentlemen, I mean to accept your offer. You 
have figured well, as your offer is just sufficient to buy 
the goods. R. H. Macy & Company have secured this 
merchandise of unusual quality and I congratulate 
you/ " 

At the beginning of this chapter we mentioned 
another form of the store's buying — where Mahomet 
goes to the mountain. This, being translated into plain 
English, means that Macy's must and does maintain 
elaborate permanent office organizations in Paris, in 
London, in Belfast and in Berlin. These in turn are 
but centers for other shopping work — shopping that 
may lead, as we have already seen, as far as the distant 
Bagdad. 

For instance, from his office in the Cite Paradis in 
Paris, the head of the French-buying organization of 
the store controls the purchase of all goods for it, not 
only in France, but in Belgium and Switzerland as well. 
He virtually combs these busy and ingenious manufac- 
turing nations for their latest specialties} from France, 
les derniers cris in fashionable gowns, millinery, per- 
fumes and novelties of every description} from Bel- 
gium, fine laces and gloves } and from Switzerland, 
watches. These items, however, are merely typical} 
there are hundreds of others. 

A young American woman, of remarkable taste and 



Buying to Sell 157 

gifted with a genuine genius for buying, is upon the 
Paris staff and is engaged practically the entire year 
round in visiting exhibitions of every sort and variety, 
in hunting the retail shops, great and small, of the 
French capital and at all times acting upon her own 
initiative as a free-lance buyer. A job surely to be 
coveted by any ambitious young woman who feels that 
she understands and can translate the constantly chang- 
ing tastes of her countrywomen into the merchandise 
needs of a store whose chief task is always to serve them. 

For reasons that are not necessary to be set down 
here, the Berlin office of Macy's has been in statu quo 
for some years past, although it is just now reopening. 
The London branch is steadily on the search for the 
clothing, haberdashery and leather specialties which are 
the pride of the British workman, while from right 
across the Irish sea, at 13 Donegal Square, North, Bel- 
fast, come the fine Irish linens that so long have been a 
distinguished merchandise feature of the store's stock. 

So it is, then, that forever and a day, Macy's is 
engaged in bringing the cream of European merchan- 
dise to New York — goods of nearly every kind that can 
either be made better abroad or cannot be duplicated at 
all in this country. Importing is indeed a large branch 
upon the Macy tree. 

And in this branch romance oftimes dwelleth. The 
picture of the caravan toiling up the banks of the 
Euphrates is no idle dream at all. Upon the world 
maps of the merchandise executives of Macy's it is 
an outpost of trading as unsentimental as Lawrence, 
Massachusetts, or Norristown, Pennsylvania. Yet the 



158 The Romance of a Great Store 

buyer who goes to the old Bagdad from the new has 
a real task set for him. Obviously he must not only 
have a knowledge of his market and a keen sense of 
values, but he must also be a resourceful traveler j a 
merchant who can adapt himself to the ways of the 
people with whom he trades. His judgment, discre- 
tion and integrity must be above reproach, for often 
he is far away and out of touch with headquarters for 
long months at a time. 

Take such a buying trip as the Oriental rug-buyer of 
Macy's recently made into the Orient and back again. 
It lasted eight months. In that time he traveled more 
than thirty thousand miles — by steamship, motor-car, 
railroad, horseback and on foot. The rug region of 
Persia is a long way, indeed, from Broadway and 
Thirty-fourth Street and to reach it he went to London 
and Paris, then to Venice, where he took a steamer for 
Bombay, upon the west coast of India. Thence he 
proceeded by another steamer up the Persian Gulf to 
the city of Basra, which is at the confluence of those 
two ancient rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates — 
between which the earliest Biblical history is supposed 
to have been made. Basra today is one of the world's 
great rug-shipping centers. 

Then he went to Bagdad itself — the fabled city of 
Haroun-el-Raschid and the Arabian Nights — from 
whence he started into the very heart of Persia. He 
was not content, however, to remain idly there and let 
the rugs be brought to him. He went much further. 
Through Kermanshah, the city whose name is given 
to the rugs which come from Kerman, seven hundred 



Buying to Sell 159 

miles to the southeast, to Hamadan, one of the main 
marketing-centers of the rug-producing country — that, 
briefly, was the beginning of his itinerary. He went 
carefully through Persia, picking up rugs here and 
there, having them baled and sent to Bagdad by mules 
or camels and shipped thence to New York} and he 
established warehouses to which rug-dealers brought 
their wares. The light of the Red Star shone in the 
East. 

Roads in Persia leave much indeed to be desired, 
and as the chief means of travel, aside from beasts of 
burden, is by Ford cars, a buyer who covers much of 
its territory has a rather unenviable job. Gasoline in 
those parts costs four dollars a gallon, while if you hire 
a jitney you pay for it at the rate of a dollar a mile. 

On his return trip to New York this buyer went 
back once again to India and north as far as the border 
of Afghanistan to investigate the condition of the rug 
market in that region. At ancient Siringar, in the Vale 
of Cashmere, he bought marvelous felt rugs made in 
the mysterious land of Thibet. And yet all the way 
throughout this long journey he was buying goods for 
only one department of the great store that he repre- 
sented. 

It used to be impressive to me when the hardware 
dealer of the small town in which I was reared would 
boast of the number of items that he held upon the 
shelves of his own center of merchandising. There 
were more than two thousand of them! He told me 
that with such an evident pride, as a Chicago man 



160 The Romance of a Great Store 

speaks of the population of his town, or one from 
Los Angeles, of his climate. And yet such a stock as 
that wonderful one that was told to my youthful imag- 
ination, is more than duplicated in Macy's — and is but 
one of one hundred and seventeen others. And the 
responsibility of buying these millions of articles is 
scarcely less great than that of selling them. 



IV. Displaying and Selling the 
Goods 

WITH Macy's goods once purchased, the next 
problem becomes that of their transport to 
the store in Herald Square. Obviously their recep- 
tion must rank second only to their purchase. And 
when this is accomplished, as we have just seen, in 
every corner of a far-flung world — Pennsylvania and 
Massachusetts and Thibet and Korea and South Africa, 
to say nothing of a thousand other places — their 
orderly receiving becomes, of itself, a mechanism of 
considerable size. Almost equally obvious it is, too, 
that the store, no matter how carefully and fore- 
visionedly and scientifically its buyers may plan, cannot 
always dispose of its merchandise at precisely the same 
rate at which it comes underneath its roof. It cannot 
afford to gain a reputation for not carrying in stock 
the items either that it advertises for sale or that it 
has educated its patrons to expect upon its counters. 
Which means that alongside of and interwined with 
the orderly business of merchandise reception there 
must be warehousing — reservoir facilities, if you please. 
In concrete form, these last of Macy's are not merely 
rooms upon the extreme upper floors on the main store 
in Herald Square — a space which in recent years, how- 
ever, has shrunk to proportionately small dimensions 

161 



1 62 The Romance of a Great Store 

because of the vast growth of the business and the 
increasing demands of the selling departments upon 
the building — but four structures entirely outside of 
the parent plant: the Tivoli Building on the north 
side of Thirty-fifth Street, just west of Broadway 
(which, as we saw in the historical section of this book 
was originally the notorious music hall of the same 
name until Macy's purchased it for its merchandising 
plans), the Hussey Building, in the same street, but 
just west of the store, a third also in Thirty-fifth, but 
close to Seventh Avenue and a fourth in Twenty-eighth 
Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. So can 
a great store spread itself, even in its actual physical 
structure, far beyond the bounds that even the most 
imaginative of its customers might ordinarily call to 
mind. 

It is in the rear of the selfsame red-brick building 
at the westerly edge of Herald Square — that same 
main structure that we have already begun to study 
in many of its fascinating details — that we find the 
core of the receiving department of the Macy store. 
It is a hollow core. A tunnel-like roadway, two hun- 
dred feet in length bores its way through the building, 
from Thirty-fifth Street to Thirty-fourth. Through 
this cavernous place, lighted at all hours by numerous 
electric arcs, there passes, the entire working-day, a 
seemingly endless procession of motor-trucks, wagons 
and other carriers. They enter at the north end and 
before they emerge at the south they have discharged 
their cargoes. A corps of men is kept constantly busy, 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 163 

checking off the merchandise as it is unloaded. Husky 
porters, with hand trucks, seize cases, barrels and mis- 
cellaneous packages of every sort and, presto! they are 
whirled into huge freight elevators which presently 
depart for upper and unknown floors. There are three 
of these, in practically continuous operation. In addi- 
tion to them packages brought by hand — generally 
from local wholesalers and in response to emergency 
orders — are carried up into the offices of the receiving 
department upon an endless carrier. 

It is a source of Wonder to the observer to see the 
way in which these men of Macy's work. The poise. 
The confidence. The system. It is terrifying even 
to think of the mess that would be the result of a day, 
or even an hour, of inexperience or carelessness. In 
fact, it would hardly take ten minutes so to jam that 
long receiving platform that straightening it out again 
would be a matter of days. But upon it every man 
knows just what to do; and every man does it, and 
does it fast. And system wins once again. It gener- 
ally does win. 

For these incoming goods receipts are made out in 
triplicate — one for the controller, one as a record for 
the receiving office and the third for the delivery agent; 
the second of these acts as a sort of herald of the actual 
arrival of the merchandise so that within sixty seconds 
or thereabouts of the actual appearance of the goods 
under the house's main roof the man who is responsible 
for them may be advised. 

Every article purchased anywhere by R. H. Macy 
& Company, either for their own use or for resale, is 



164 The Romance of a Great Store 

received through this department, although there are 
a few other points than the tunnel-like interior street 
from Thirty-fourth Street to Thirty-fifth where they 
are received. The four warehouses that we have just 
seen have their individual receiving facilities: the coal 
that goes to heat and light and drive the big main 
building is poured through chutes under the Thirty- 
fourth Street pavement, while direct to the company's 
stables and garages go the fodder for its vehicles — hay 
for the horses of flesh and blood, and gasoline and oil 
for those of steel and iron; all the other miniature 
mountains of their incidental materials into the bargain. 
But even these are checked in at the main receiving 
department} and triplicate receipts issued upon their 
arrival. 

So, then, come in these goods — by hand, express, by 
parcel post and freight. The most of them have had 
their transport charges prepaid j a certain small pro- 
portion of them comes marked "collect." An especial 
provision must be made for the cash payment of these 
charges. The big machine of modern industry must 
indeed have many odd cams and levers adjusted to it. 
It must be designed not alone for the usual, but for 
the unusual, and in a multitude of ways. 

These, then, are the reception chutes of the Macy 
machine; the porters, who even while hastening their 
trucks toward the elevators are making a cursory exam- 
ination of the arrival condition of the merchandise, are 
in themselves small automatic arms of inspection. For 
while some of these packages have come from nearby 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 165 

— perhaps not half a block distant — others will have 
come from halfway around the wide world. And the 
possibility of damage to the contents of the carrier is 
lurking always in the short-distance package, quite as 
much as in its brother, that has attained the distinction 
of being a globe-trotter. The crates from the Middle 
West, those stout and honest looking Yankee boxes 
from New England, this group of barrels from the 
heart of new Czecho-Slovakia, and that of zinc-lined 
cases from France — the Lorraine has touched at her 
North River pier but two or three days since — those 
great bales and bundles from the Orient, with the seem- 
ingly meaningless (and extremely meaningful) symbols 
splashed upon their rough sides, all look sturdy 
enough, as if they had survived well the vicissitudes of 
modern travel. Yet one can never tell. 

Which means that the personnel of the order check- 
ing department up on the seventh floor must not only 
carefully verify the shipment as to quality and to price 
but as to the condition in which it actually is received. 
The hurried cursory examination of the platform 
porters becomes an unhurried and painstaking investi- 
gation in this last instance. The cases are not neces- 
sarily opened within the seventh floor headquarters of 
the order checking department. As in the case of the 
actual physical receipt, the unpacking is carried forward 
at the point of greatest convenience to the merchan- 
dise department to be served. But the results and 
records are kept at the one central headquarters. 

And the skilled and expert merchandise checkers 
from the selfsame headquarters are the men and women 



1 66 The Romance of a Great Store 

who oversee the unpacking — invariably. They pass 
the responsibility of their stamp and signature upon 
their receipts before the merchandise is turned over to 
the department manager, who himself, or through his 
responsibility, purchased it. Nothing is left to guess- 
work, or to chance. 

Now we see the full responsibility settled once again 
upon the broad shoulders — let us hope indeed that they 
are broad — of the buyer. With a full knowledge of 
the price that he paid for them, of market conditions, 
and of the prices of Macy's competitors he determines 
the prices at which his merchandise is to be sold. 
Clerks, known as markers, quickly attach these prices 
by small tags to the goods themselves. 

From the marking-rooms, where everything to be 
sold within this market-place is plainly and unequivo- 
cally priced, the merchandise goes without further delay 
either direct to the counters of the selling floors, or into 
the "reserves" — the warehouses that extend all the way 
from Twenty-eighth Street to north of Thirty-fifth, 
and from Broadway to Eighth Avenue. The stage is 
set. The show is ready. The performance may now 
begin. 

A trip through the hinterland of the Macy store is 
like a visit behind the scenes of a modern theater. You 
see there just the way in which the drama of selling 
actually is staged, from the settings to the properties. 
You rub shoulders with the actors and actresses, just 
off stage j with the electrician, the stage-manager, the 
carpenter and the stage-hands. And always your ear 



Displaying and Selling the Goods i6j 

is waiting to hear outside the orchestra and the applause 
of the audience. 

Into that ear there comes the almost rhythmic thud 
of automatic machines} a sort of continuous drone. 
You turn quickly and find beside you a row of ticket- 
printers, the little electric presses in which are made 
the price-tags that you find pinned or pasted or tied on 
every piece of Macy merchandise you buy. Miles of 
thin cardboard are fed into one side of these machines 
and come out the other ; in proper-sized units, with 
the selling price of the article to be tagged plainly 
printed on them. Where the article is subject to Fed- 
eral tax, this is also included as a separate item and the 
total given. One of these machines combines the opera- 
tion of printing the price and attaching the ticket to the 
garment. It is detail — necessary detail, detail upon a 
vast scale. 

Here, then, is the receiving department of this great 
single retailing machine of modern business. It keeps 
over three hundred human units constantly upon the 
move — and, mind you, all that these people are doing 
is merely making the merchandise ready to sell. The 
next step is the final one before actual sale; the display 
of proffered goods — upon the counters and within the 
plate-glass windows along the street frontages. 

This, in the modern department-store, is considered 
a feature of the utmost importance, and nowhere more 
so than at Macy's. Sixty-four years of salesmanship 
experience, in the course of which it has been the orig- 



1 68 The Romance of a Great Store 

inator of many daring and successful display experi- 
ments, has shown the house their full value. 

Yet, even in Macy's, there are certain reservations 
to the strong house policy of attractive display. Cer- 
tain fundamentals are stressed. The invitation to buy 
is forever put in the goods themselves rather than in 
the background against which they are shown. It 
requires no especial astuteness to see from this fact 
alone an enormous expense is saved j the benefit of 
which, according to the now well understood Macy 
plan, is passed on to buyer. Other stores spend many 
thousands of dollars in building and decorating special 
rooms and sections for merchandising which are far 
out of the ordinary. To give an air of extreme exclu- 
siveness, chic y Parisian atmosphere — call it what you 
may — elaborate partitions are put up and expensive 
decorators given carte-blanche. The result is beautiful, 
almost invariably. Shopping in such surroundings 
becomes a peculiar delight — particularly to the woman 
patron. But milady pays. In the expressive, if not 
elegant, old phrase she "pays through the nose." 

That some New York shoppers may like to pay this 
way is not for a moment to be doubted, but that the 
majority do, Macy's stoutly refuses to believe. While 
the house has not hesitated to install certain very lovely 
"special" rooms — vide the salon for the display of its 
imported frocks — the main thought in the construc- 
tion of its present home in Herald Square was to build 
a retail market-place which would afford honest, effi- 
cient, comfortable marketing at the lowest possible 
prices. This meant that it would be inadvisable, to say 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 169 

the least, to give the store the atmosphere of either a 
palace or a boudoir. This is a policy that has continued 
until this day. 

None the less, Macy goods are displayed with the 
taste that makes them most desirable to the customer j 
psychological forethought, in a word. Novelties, of 
course, take precedence over staples — the articles that 
make the customer stop and investigate. Except under 
unusual conditions, the demand for staples does not 
have to be stimulated, and ordinarily no especial 
attempt is made to give them more than ordinary dis- 
play. One underlying factor in the successful display 
of goods is to preserve harmonious color relations 
between them and, so far as possible, this harmony 
pervades the entire floor. The buying public would not 
tolerate a store where they heard profanity among the 
employees j and at Macy's they do not have to endure 
colors that swear at one another. 

Held in high esteem by the public as well as by the 
store itself are the display windows which line the entire 
ground-floor frontage of the building on Broadway 
and on Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets. Here 
merchandise is arranged by master window dressers 
under the general direction of the advertising depart- 
ment, for if the front windows of a house such as this 
are not advertising, what, then, is? Especially when 
the art of window dressing has come in recent years to 
be a finely developed art of its own. For many years 
before it left Fourteenth Street Macy's had a fame not 
merely nation-wide but fairly world-wide for its 
window displays — we already have referred to the won- 



170 The Romance of a Great Store 

drous Christmas pageants that it formerly held as a 
part of them. In this it was again a pioneer, blazing 
a new commercial path for its competitors to follow. 

Because window display is recognized as advertising, 
the ceaseless work of the master window dressers upon 
the outer rim of the Macy store comes under the direct 
supervision of the advertising department which in turn 
reports direct to no less an authority than the triple 
partnership itself. Publicity is the great right-arm 
of the super-store of the America of today. Publicity 
not in one channel, but in a thousand. Macy's not only 
helps to dominate the advertising pages of the news- 
papers of New York and a good many miles round 
about it, its red star not only gleams in Herald Square, 
but in these very recent days upon the high-set electric 
hoardings of Times Square that blaze forth far into the 
night} it finds its way into the public thought here and 
there and everywhere. And yet, with due appreciation 
of every other medium of publicity, the street window 
of the store still remains one of the most important 
phases of its appeal to possible patrons. 

Its displays are scheduled long in advance} are 
devised as carefully as the decoration of a home might 
be, or, better still, as Urban or Pogany would plan the 
stage-settings of a scene in the Metropolitan or at any 
one of the various "Follies" that one finds just north 
of the Opera House. A large staff of men is kept con- 
stantly at work dressing the windows, and this staff 
includes the carpenters, paper-hangers, painters and 
electricians who are needed to help prepare the special 
exhibits. Under the floor of the window next the prin- \ 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 171 

cipal entrance on Thirty-fourth Street there is a tank, 
which is used when a pool of water is required to carry 
out some scenic effect. It is capable of floating a canoe 
to suggest the joys of camping and the need of going 
to Macy's for one's vacation requisites — as well as for 
use in other capacities. Known in the store as the 
"parlor window" it has been made to represent pretty 
nearly everything from milady's bedroom to a glorified 
carpenter shop. 

Window displays are regarded by Macy's as an 
important auxiliary to newspaper announcements. 
Very recently, during the few weeks before Christmas, 
a sale of overcoats was advertised. All the windows 
were then dressed with Christmas merchandise, but 
from one of them this was all removed and the sale 
overcoats substituted. For one day only. For upon 
the very next one the Christmas window was returned 
to its holly and mistletoe flavor. 

Here is a pretty direct indication of the store's atti- 
tude towards its immensely valuable windows — if you 
do not consider them valuable inquire the price of the 
advertising signs in the Herald Square neighborhood. 
I asked its advertising manager if, in his opinion, the 
window space would not bring better returns if it were 
devoted to direct selling, instead of mere indirect selling 
through display. I had in the back of my mind some 
of the great Paris emporiums who think so little of 
window- and so much of selling-space that on bright 
warm days they spread some of their notions and 
novelty-counters right out upon the broad sidewalks 
of the Boulevards. 



172 The Romance of a Great Store 

"No," said he, "decidedly no. To be able to show 
one's goods to the multitudes that pass these windows 
nearly every hour of the day is an asset that cannot be 
overestimated." 

This is neither the time nor the place to go into the 
ethics or the fine principles of the most recently devel- 
oped of American professions — advertising; the sales- 
manship of goods and of ideas not so much by the 
merchandise itself as by the representation of it. 
Neither is it the place to review the vast position that 
the modern department store has taken in the develop- 
ment of modern advertising of every sort: Newspapers, 
magazines, bill-boards, electric signs, other forms of 
display as well. There are folk who say that if it were 
not for the department-store advertising we should 
not have had the fully developed metropolitan news- 
paper of today; while, on the other hand, some of the 
larger merchants are not reluctant in saying that our 
modern metropolitan newspapers are the chief causes 
that have made the department-store as we know it in 
New York and other large cities of the United States 
possible. Be these things as they may, the fact does 
remain, however, solid and indisputable, that the 
co-operation between these two groups of interests has 
been more than profitable to their patrons, to say 
nothing of themselves. And not the least of the con- 
tributing causes to such profits is the fundamental 
honesty of the advertisements. 

Not so very many years ago the measure of integrity 
in advertising was, to speak charitably, a variable one. 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 173 

When they talked about them in print merchants were 
very likely to become overenthusiastic about their 
goods. Modesty was flung to the four winds. 
Printers' ink seemed to be taken as an automatic abso- 
lution for exaggeration — and oftimes absolute mis- 
statement — and, strangely enough, the public appeared 
to fall in with the idea. More often than not the 
merchant "got away with it" — or, if not, made good 
with bad grace, in which case the customer was satisfied. 
He had to be. 

But not so with Macy's. Early in its history an 
advertising policy was formulated that has endured to 
the present and will continue to endure. It is the 
house's stoutly expressed belief that there is no possible 
excuse whatsoever for misrepresentation and, following 
this out, it is its invariable rule to stand back of its 
advertising, to the last ditch. To this end it has 
inculcated such a spirit of conservatism into its adver- 
tising department that the superlative is eliminated and 
forbidden in describing Macy goods. "We may think 
that these articles are the best, or the most beautiful, 
or the greatest bargain, but we can't absolutely be sure 
of it." That is its attitude. The only possible 
criticism is the same that one applies to the man who 
stands so straight that he leans backward. 

Is the system flawless? Of course not — no system 
is. Not many weeks ago an incident occurred that 
shows how Macy's may slip up — and then make good} 
it put out a small newspaper advertisement featuring 
coats for small boys at $8.74. These were advertised 
as "wool chinchilla" and so potent was the appeal of 



174 The Romance of a Great Store 

the notice that by ten o'clock the entire stock of nine 
hundred coats was gone. Then one of the store 
executives discovered that the coats were not all wool 
and things began to hum. 

"Never said that they were all wool," the respon- 
sible sub-executive cornered. "People ought to know 
that they can't buy an all-wool coat for that money." 

That made no difference with the big boss. 
Patiently and firmly he explained that in a Macy 
advertisement "wool" means "all-wool" except where 
it is clearly specified that it contains cotton. Another 
advertisement was inserted in the newspapers the fol- 
lowing day. It explained and apologized for the mis- 
statement and said, "We would deem it a favor if our 
customers would bring in these coats and accept a return 
of their money." Out of the nine hundred coats sold 
one was brought back for credit, while another was 
brought in by a customer who wanted to keep the coat 
but thought that she might get a rebate. She didn't. 
Macy's may lean over backward but it doesn't drag on 
the ground — an instance of which is contained in the 
following: 

Christmas candy for Sunday Schools was advertised 
in a number of New York newspapers at the very low 
price of $7.44 for one hundred pounds. In one news- 
paper three pieces of type fell out of the form with the 
result that the advertisement went to press quoting a 
hundred-weight of candy at forty-four cents! It was 
patent that it was a typographical error, for the 
decimal point, as well as the dollar mark and the figure 
7 was gone and there was a blank space where the 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 175 

types were missing. Three would-be customers tried, 
however, to hold the store accountable for the very 
obvious error. And Macy's balked! 

The lowest-in-the-city-prices policy keeps the adver- 
tising department on its toes continually. Other stores' 
prices must be anticipated wherever it is humanly pos- 
sible, which means constant revisions of the copy. 
Occasionally a price duel develops that becomes spec- 
tacular in the extreme. In a recent memorable one 
"hard water soap" figured as the casus belli. Macy 
patrons know their right now to expect lowest prices, 
so when another store began to cut Macy's advertised 
prices on this commodity, Macy's had to return in suite. 
Whereupon the other store cut under Macy's again j 
and Macy's in turn went its competitor one better. It 
then became a merry game of parry and thrust until, 
one fine day, Macy's was selling twelve dozen cakes 
of hard water soap for the inconsiderable sum of one 
copper cent. One came near godliness for a small 
amount that day. The public profited hugely, but 
Macy's lived up to its policy. 

As a rule advertisements originate with the depart- 
ment managers. Keeping in mind that they are the 
buyers, the merchants responsible for the moving of 
their stock, it can be seen that they know best the goods 
that ought to be featured. The value of the space 
used is charged against their departments, so that their 
requisitions are governed accordingly. The adver- 
tising manager is a large factor, however, in the allot- 
ment of space — not only the clearing-house, but 



176 The Romance of a Great Store 

practically the court of last resort — concerning the rival 
claims by the department manager for space upon a 
given day. After all, there is a limit to the size of a 
newspaper page. 

When a certain line of goods is about to be adver- 
tised, the comparison department is notified and the 
articles are "shopped." That is, one or more of the 
expert shopping staff is given the task of ascertaining 
what other stores are charging for the same things so 
that it may be made sure that the Macy price will be 
lower. The information then is passed on to the copy 
writing staff and samples of the goods are studied for 
selling points. While the description is being written, 
one of the art staff makes a drawing, either in the nature 
of a design or illustration, and when these are com- 
pleted the advertisement is set in type. This, bear in 
mind, is only for one item. Macy advertisements, 
more often than not, cover an entire newspaper page 
and are made up of many separate items, each of which 
goes through practically the same process of creation. 
Their final collection and arrangement on the page are 
made by an advertising expert of skill and taste and 
from this fact, combined with the distinctive type faces 
that are commonly used, one might be reasonably sure 
of identifying a Macy advertisement even if the store 
name were to be entirely omitted. 

In addition to window display, newspaper and maga- 
zine announcements, it is the concern of the advertising 
department to provide the store with its sign cards and 
special-price tickets. These are all a part of the big 
problem of letting the public know about Macy goods. 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 177 

Yet above and beyond all of these things, the store's 
supreme advertisement, if you please, is the establish- 
ment itself, the service that it strives so sincerely to 
give. To use the current phrase of expert publicity 
men, the store, its salespeople and its prices must sell 
Macy's to the outside world. Outside advertising is 
but supplementary to thisj but a single horse in a team 
of four. 

With this fact firmly fixed in your mind, consider 
next the unbending problem of making the salesf orce 
into a genuine salesf orce j one that constantly and 
continually backs up the force of the printed advertise- 
ment by the skill of its real salesmanship. When we 
come in another chapter to consider the Macy family 
as a whole we shall see in some detail its remarkable 
educational and training opportunities. These have 
been brought to bear directly upon the creation, not 
only of thoroughness and accuracy on the part of the 
clerk, but for courtesy and persuasiveness and enthusi- 
asm as well — the things that make the structure of 
morale j that quality that we first began to know and 
to understand as such in the days of the Great War. 

"If you are playing a game, such as tennis, or bridge, 
or baseball or what-not," said one of the department 
managers to his sales staff but a few mornings ago, 
"you are out to beat your best friend j if you can, do it 
fairly and squarely, otherwise never. The enjoyment 
you derive from a game depends on the spirit with 
which you play it. When you begin to regard business 
in a similar light, playing it as a game in a sportsman- 



178 The Romance of a Great Store 



like manner, then you will begin to get fun out of it — 
you will begin to make progress." 

After the preliminary training which every salesclerk 
receives, he or she is assigned to a department. 
Thenceforward a good deal depends on personal 
initiative} for in dealing with customers no small part 
of the store's reputation for efficiency and courtesy 
depends upon the individual clerk. A salesperson may 
become not only a distinct asset to the house, but may 
develop a personal clientele through especially intelli- 
gent and courteous attention to the customers' wishes. 
And this, owing to the system of allowing a bonus on 
sales above a certain fixed quota, and a commission on 
sales up to that quota, may make it financially very 
much worth while to him or her. 

Salesmanship in a store as large as Macy's must of 
necessity include the knowledge of considerable detail 
in the making out of sales slips, procedure with regard 
to C. O. D. deliveries, depositors' accounts, exchanges 
and the like. This knowledge is a fundamental part 
of each salesperson's equipment. His or her efficiency 
must come, however, from a far wider development of 
the possibilities of the salesmanship, from the "playing 
of the game," as the department manager put it but a 
moment ago — the understanding use of courtesy, mer- 
chandise knowledge, helpfulness. Such efficiency 
pays. The Macy folk who come to use it regularly 
soon find themselves advancing to responsible and 
highly-paid positions. 

It is interesting to follow the career of a sales slip 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 1 79 

from the time it is made out — when the sale is made — 
until the time that it ceases to function. Here is one 
of the most important items in the mechanism of a 
large retail store. It is an essential unit of a carefully 
developed system to keep track of sales, from the 
minute that they are made until they are finally 
delivered and audited. 

The sales slip — the Macy clerk has three different 
ones of them in all — is made in three distinct parts — 
original, duplicate and triplicate. Each of these is 
divided into several parts j each of which in turn is 
destined for separate hands. The packer of the mer- 
chandise gets one part, which eventually goes to the 
customer, a second to the cashier, the third the clerk 
retains. Eventually these last two come together once 
again in the auditing department and are checked, the 
one against the other; after which one goes into the 
archives of the bureau of investigation, in case that 
there is any further question about the details of the 
transaction. This one example of the infinite detail in 
the conduct of a great store is a slight indication of the 
responsibility upon the shoulders of not only its 
managers but the rank and file of its salesf orce as well. 
A single error in the making out of a sales slip may 
easily result in expensive and harassing complications 
all the way along the line. 

A system of transfer books enables the store's cus- 
tomer to make purchases in its various departments 
with the least possible waiting. The goods and prices 
are entered in a small book which is given the customer 
at the time of the first purchase of the day. While 



180 The Romance of a Great Store 

the customer is making his or her other purchases they 
are being sent to the wrapping room where they are 
held in a growing group until the customer presents 
the book to the cashier at the transfer desk on the main 
floor, pays the total and, a few minutes later, receives 
a neat package in which all of the items are wrapped 
together j or else it is sent to any designated address. 

Enough, for the moment, of detail. Some of it is 
necessary to a proper understanding of the workings 
of this great machine of modern business, but too much 
of it may easily bore you. Instead, quickly turn your 
attention to a Macy feature dear to the heart of the 
average shopper — male or deadlier. Here is the 
familiar, the time-honored "special sale." In holding 
these Macy does not lay claim to originality, except 
perhaps in the amount of merchandising involved and 
the spectacularly low prices. Sales are in a large 
measure opportunities for the store as well as for the 
customer. It takes a goodly amount of merchandise 
from a manufacturer who for some reason offers a 
large concession in price and passes on its advantage to 
its customers. This is not generosity. It is good 
business. It is sound business. It is progressive 
business. 

Take a sale of laundry soap that went on within the 
great store about a year ago. The soap was made in this 
country and contracted for by the city of Paris, upon a 
dollar basis. Exchange slumped, and with francs 
worth only a fraction of their former value, Paris 
couldn't afford to take it. Macy's offer for it 



Displaying and Selling the Goods 1 8 1 

was accepted and so marked was the reduction at which 
it was offered to the public that inside of two weeks 
the big store had sold twenty-two carloads of it. 
Figuring from the fact that a carload comprised six 
hundred cases, the turnover amounted to 6,862 cases j 
or, counting a hundred bars to a case, 686,200 pieces of 
soap! 

The most successful sale of winter underwear that 
Macy's ever held took place during a very warm 
week in July, a twelvemonth before the laundry soap 
episode. A large manufacturer wanted to unload his 
stock and Macy's bought it for cash. Add to these 
facts the consideration that the goods were away out 
of season and you can readily see how it was possible 
to buy the goods at a very low price. Relying upon 
the public's ability to judge values, in and out of 
season, the store launched the sale — and launched it 
successfully. It was like a scene out of Alice in 
Wonderland to see the crowds of men and women with 
perspiration rolling down their foreheads buying 
woolen "undies" against the needs of winter. Ameri- 
cans do like to be forehanded. 

Macy's ability to buy and sell huge quantities of 
merchandise is demonstrated through these sales. 
Very recently over seven thousand of a particular 
leather traveling bag were sold in less than four weeks, 
at an aggregate price of nearly $75,000. In one day 
seven hundred vacuum cleaners were sold for $29.75 
each. This list might be continued indefinitely; for 
not only has Macy's proved that it pays to advertise 
but that it pays to follow the Macy advertisements. 



1 82 The Romance of a Great Store 

Down in the basement of this great mart of Herald 
Square there is a corner not often shown to the outer 
world, from which there constantly emerge noises which 
blend and combine to give the effect of a staccato 
rumble. Thud, thud, t-h-u-u-d, thud, thudity, thud, 
thud. Then a sound of air, as in a Gargantuan sigh. 
Thudity, thud, and so on, ad infinitum. These sounds 
seemingly are quite unending. If your curiosity draws 
you toward the door from which these sounds emerge 
and you finally are premitted to open it and go within, 
you will find a company of young women sitting along 
both sides of three sets of moving belts, quickly pick- 
ing brass cylinders from the belts as they pass them. 
Except for the fact that there is another tube room on 
the fourth floor (for the upper floor selling depart- 
ments) this basement place might truly be called the 
heart of the store, for it is these brass cylinders that 
contain the life-blood of the business, the cash which 
the customers pay for their purchases. Call the tube 
room the pulse of the store and the analogy is better — 
certainly their throbbing is a close index of its 
condition. 

Alert cashiers pick up the carriers from the upper 
belt as they pass, deftly make the required change, and 
drop them to the lower belt, on which they are con- 
veyed to other young women who despatch them to 
the departments whence they came. This continues 
for approximately eight hours each working day. The 
cash carriers do considerable traveling in the course of 
a year. One of them might easily go from the new 
Bagdad to the old. Yes, it might. If you still scoff 



Dis flaying and Selling the Goods 183 

let us look at the system together and do a little figur- 
ing upon our own account. 

Throughout the store there are two hundred and 
fifty cash stations — the outer terminals of the line at 
one of whose common hearts we now stand. Each of 
these stations is connected with one or the other of the 
common hearts by two separate lines of tubing, one for 
sending and the other for receiving the carriers. 
There is a total of 125,000 feet of this tubing, or nearly 
twenty-four miles. Five thousand cash carriers are 
in use and the average number of round-trips made 
per day by all of them is 150,000. Each round-trip 
averages two hundred and fifty feet. The average 
distance traveled each day by this host of travelers then 
comes to the astonishing total of 37,500,000 feet — 
7,155 miles. Now to your atlases and find how far 
the new Bagdad is from the old. And if that distance 
does not give you pause, consider that the peak-load of 
the system was carried on a day when its mileage ran 
to 12,120 — an equivalent of one-half the distance 
around the world — in a little over eight hours. 

Truly it would seem that money goes far at Macy's. 



V. Distributing the Goods 

WHEN milady of Manhattan finishes her pur- 
chases in Macy's, snaps her purse together once 
again and goes out of the store, the transaction is ended, 
at least as far as she herself is concerned. But not so 
for Macy's. Particularly not so when she has given 
orders that the goods be "sent," either to her own home 
or to the home of some friend. In such cases the 
largest part of the store's responsibility still is ahead 
of it. It must see to it that the package — or packages — 
shall be carried to the proper destination, quickly, 
promptly, correctly. Which means that the great 
business machine of Herald Square has another great 
function to perform. 

There is, in the sub-basement of the Herald Square 
store, where the greatest portion of its own great trans- 
portation system is situated, an ancient two-wheeled 
cart, somewhat faded and battered, yet still a red 
delivery wagon and showing clearly the name of the 
house it served, R. H. Macy & Company. It is a 
treasured relic of other days, which now and then again, 
at great intervals, is shown to the populace in the all- 
too-rare parades of the huge wagon equipment of the 
store today. 

The gentleman who gives the lecture which accom- 

185 



1 86 The Romance of a Great Store 

panies any public showing of this ancient equipage is 
Mr. James Woods, who, as we have already seen, has 
been with the store for nearly half a century and who 
has risen in its service to the important post of assistant 
superintendent of the delivery department. Mr. 
Woods regards the cart with tender affection, since it 
was he who once was the human horse who strode be- 
tween its shafts. That was back in 1873, long years 
before the store had moved north from the once tree- 
shaded Fourteenth Street. Mr. Macy, himself, was 
still very much in charge of the enterprise and was 
passing proud of his delivery "fleet" — consisting of 
three horse-drawn wagons, and young Jimmie Woods 
with the cart. A good many prosperous New Yorkers 
then had their residences within a dozen blocks or 
less of the old store, and young Jimmie's legs — 
and the cart — could and did serve them, easily and 
expeditiously. 

That was almost the beginning of the Macy delivery 
department. In fact it had been but five years before 
that Mr. Macy had acquired the first horse-drawn rig 
for this purpose. From that beginning the growth 
was steady although slow. Ten years after Mr. Woods 
first came to it — in 1883 — there were but fifteen 
wagons. In 1902, when the great trek was made north 
to Herald Square, there were a hundred. Today there 
are more than two hundred and fifty, of which by far 
the larger number are motor driven. These last range 
all the way from the big five-ton motor trucks which, 
as we shall presently see, are used primarily for carry- 
ing merchandise between the store and its outlying 



Distributing the Goods 187 

distributing stations, down to the small one-ton truck, 
which is used at its greatest advantage in city street 
distribution. And an astonishing number of horse- 
drawn vehicles remain. That is, astonishing to the 
uninitiated layman, who perhaps has been led to believe 
that the motor truck in this, its heyday of perfection, 
could hardly be surpassed for any form of carrying. 
As a matter of fact, however, the department-stores as 
well as the express companies, skilled in the multiple 
distribution of small packages, have, after a careful and 
intensive study of the motor trucks — which has resulted 
in their ordering many, many hundreds of them for 
certain of their necessities — discovered that for certain 
forms of delivery the horse and wagon still remains 
unsurpassed. The time that a delivery wagon remains 
standing becomes an economic factor in its use. If it 
moved all the time it undoubtedly would be as cheap 
and certainly more efficient to use a small automobile 
truck. But when there are fairly lengthy stops and 
close together, where perhaps the vehicle is idle for 
four minutes for every one that it is actually in opera- 
tion, the factor of having an expensive machine idle as 
against an inexpensive one comes into play. 

Business organizations reckon these things not alone 
from sentiment, but from hard-headed facts. Yet they 
are not entirely free from sentiment, even in such 
seemingly purely commercial matters as delivery. The 
very condition and upkeep of the vehicles of a high- 
grade department-store show this. "Spic-and-span" 
is hardly the phrase by which to describe them. Fresh 
paint and gold striping — the smooth sides so cleaned 



1 88 The Romance of a Great Store 

and polished, that one might see his face reflected 
mirror-like upon them, the horses to the last state of 
perfection — this is the Macy standard of delivery. A 
Macy truck and wagon is designed to be one of the 
store's best advertisements. 

A skillful trucking contractor from the lower west 
side of New York went to a department-store owner 
a dozen years or more ago and said: 

"Mr. A , after a little study of your delivery 

service, I am convinced that if you would turn it over 
to me, I could save you more than fifty per cent, in its 
operation." 

Mr. A was a pretty hard-headed business man, 

"hard-boiled" is the word that might well be used to 
describe him. He turned quickly to the contractor. 

"You interest me," said he. "How would you pro- 
pose to do it?" 

"At the outset, by making the wagon equipment a 
little less elaborate. It could be just as efficient with- 
out so much varnish and brass and gold-stripe." 

Mr. A shook his head negatively. 

"Oh, no," he said, "we know that much ourselves. 
If we were to do that, we should lose fifty per cent, of 
our advertisement upon the streets of New York." 

We have left milady's package where she left it, in 
the hands of the salesclerk who sold it to her. The 
purchaser does not see it thereafter, not at least until 
it has come to her home. With an astonishing celerity 
and according to a carefully set-down program and 
practice it is wrapped right within the floor upon which 



Distributing the Goods 189 

the selling department is situated, and then dropped 
into a chute which leads with a straight, swift run into 
that nether world of Macy's — the basement headquar- 
ters of the delivery department. In reality this chute 
is a carrier, so designed as to carry the small individual 
packages with safety and order, as well as with celerity. 

There are fourteen of these conveyors, coming down 
from all the selling floors save that of furniture which 
has its own special delivery organization on the ninth 
floor. Together they pour their almost constant stream 
of merchandise upon the so-called "revolving-ring" in 
the very center of the basement floor. This "revolv- 
ing-ring," in purpose very much like the great and 
slowly revolving disc-like wooden wheels used in the 
freight stations of the express companies for a similar 
service, is, in reality, much larger than they. It is a 
"square-ring" — if I may use that paradoxical phrase — 
built of four slow r ly moving conveyor belts upon which 
a package may travel an indefinite number of round- 
trips. At various points upon the outer edge of this 
moving square the conveyor chutes drop their mer- 
chandise. Near the center are the wide-open mouths 
of other conveyors, which lead to distant corners of the 
basement. 

The nimble-fingered and nimble-witted young men 
who stand within the "revolving-ring" feed the 
packages from it into these last conveyors. To each 
individual package is affixed a duplicate portion of the 
leaf of the salesbook. On it the salesclerk has written, 
or printed, the address to which the merchandise is to 
go, the cost, whether or not it is collect on delivery 



190 The Romance of a Great Store 

(known hereafter in this telling as C. O. D.) and other 
essential information. It is the addresses, however, 
which attract the eyes of the genii of the "revolving- 
ring." In their minds these fall into four great cate- 
gories: City, meaning those portions of Manhattan 
Island south of Seventy-second Street on the east side 
and Ninety-ninth Street on the west} Harlem and the 
Bronx, the incorporated city of New York north of 
those two streets} Brooklyn and New Jersey — self- 
explanatory} and Suburban: all the rest of the territory 
within the far-flung limits of Macy's own generously 
wide delivery service. While for those points that are 
unfortunate enough to lie just outside of it — Boston 
or Philadelphia or Kamchatka or Manila (There 
hardly is an address to stagger the Macy delivery 
department) — the packages go direct to the shipping 
room, in its own corner of the basement. 

Here these last are checked and wrapped for long- 
distance shipment. They are checked against the pay- 
ment or the non-payment of transportation charges; 
the store has very definite rules of its own. A paid 
purchase of but $2.50 is entitled to free delivery within 
any of the Eastern States, of $5 and over to any of the 
Middle States as well, of $10 and over to any corner 
of the whole United States. Freight and express pre- 
payments are arranged upon a somewhat similar basis. 
The majority of the long-distance shipments go by 
parcel post, however. Still, in the course of a twelve- 
month, there are enough to go both by express and 
freight to make a pretty considerable transportation 
bill in themselves. 



Distributing the Goods 191 

Again we have neglected that precious package of 
milady's. It may be only an extra pair of corset- 
laces — in which case the saleswoman must have sug- 
gested that madam herself transport it to her habitat — 
or it may be an eight or ten-yard piece of heavy silk 
for her new evening gown, or the evening gown itself. 
In any case it receives the same care and attention. We 
have already seen how it is packed, sent through the 
conveyor-chute down into the basement and then upon 
the "revolving-ring" before the nimble eyes of the 
men with nimble hands and wits as well. 

Milady lives in West One Hundred and Fourth 
Street. The sorter's eyes catch that much from the 
address slip, torn originally from the salesclerk's book 
and pasted upon the package's outer wrappings. 
"Harlem" his mind reports back to his eyes. Into the 
chute-entrance labeled "Harlem and The Bronx" goes 
the package. 

"Harlem and The Bronx" is a sizable room for itself. 
The further end of the second conveyor to receive 
milady's precious package rests upon a table in its very 
center. Roundabout the table are small compartments 
or bins, each about the size of a small packing case; 
each numbered and corresponding to a definite wagon 
route or run. Run No. 87 (the number is purely 
fictitious) takes in West One Hundred and Fourth 
Street. Into compartment No. 87 goes milady's 
packages. But not, of course, until the clerical young 
man technically known as the sheet-writer has made a 
record of it. Into his records, also, go all the other 
packages destined that day for that particular room. 



192 The Romance of a Great Store 

If there should be, as sometimes happens, an overplus 
of packages for the single run, then it is the business 
of one of the assistant superintendents of delivery to 
meet the emergency either by stretching momentarily 
the runs of the adjoining routes or by sending a special 
wagon up from the main store. Experience and judg- 
ment must cut the cloth to fit the case. 

Under any ordinary procedure milady's package will 
go out early in the morning of the day following her 
purchase. That, at least, is the store's ordinary guar- 
antee of delivery. As a matter of fact, it does far 
better than this. On ordinary days, when weather and 
street conditions in Manhattan have not gone in con- 
ditions of near-impassability, there are at least two 
regular deliveries to every part of the island south of 
One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, with a single one 
at least to every other part of Manhattan, Brooklyn 
and the Bronx, to say nothing of the downtown portions 
of Jersey City and Hoboken. Easily said, this thing. 
But when one comes to realize how tremendously wide- 
spread the metropolitan district of Greater New York 
is these days, the performance of it becomes a trans- 
portation marvel, a masterpiece of organization. 

I shall not bore you with a description of the printed 
forms, the checks and counter checks that accompany 
the delivery of milady's package. It is enough to 
say that they are both complete and necessary. The 
complications of C. O. D. add greatly to their 
perplexities. For, discourage it as they may and do, the 
department-store owners of New York never have been 
able to wean milady from the joys of this method of 



Distributing the Goods 193 

shopping. When she says "C. O. D." in Macy's the 
salesclerk immediately and courteously replies: "Have 
you tried having a depositor's account, madam?" A 
good many of them have, and all who have have liked 
the method. Yet the C. O. D. still has its great appeal. 
And out of all the deliveries from the big store in 
Herald Square more than half of them are collect-on- 
delivery. This means, in turn, a good deal of com- 
plication for the delivery department. Its drivers 
have to be cashiers, in miniature. When they report 
at the main store at half -past seven in the morning, 
each is furnished with five dollars in change j a sum 
which is doubled in the case of the suburban drivers. 
Moreover, for the correct handling of the forms, a 
double amount of care and understanding is required. 
One does not wonder that the department-store pro- 
prietors discourage the C. O. D. 

Yet it all requires a high type of wagon representa- 
tive. Hardly less than the salesclerk does the wagon 
driver of the store have it in his power to make or lose 
friends for his house. His is no small opportunity for 
real salesmanship. The big stores realize this, and 
select these men with great care and discernment. 
They know that the man who shouts "Macy's" up the 
areaway or elevator-shaft once or twice a week is apt 
to become the same sort of good family friend and ally 
as the iceman or the butcher's boy. The man knows 
that, too: particularly in the vicinity of Christmas week. 
His own trials are many and varied. Apartment house 
superintendents and janitors, with prejudices of their 
own, are rarely co-operative, generally obstructive, in 



194 The Romance of a Great Store 

fact. Some people — even store patrons — are naturally 
mean* They take out all their meanness upon the 
department-store man who, because of his very position, 
is unable to strike back. 

Yet the job has its compensations, aside from the 
warm remembrances of the holiday season. People, 
in the main, are decent after all. If Mrs. Jinks, who 
lives in Albemarle Road, Flatbush, is out at the matinee 
or the movies for the afternoon, Mrs. Blinks, who lives 
next door, will take in her packages. The Macy man 
has been long enough on the route to know that by this 
time. Such knowledge is a part of his stock in trade. 
He must not only know the regular patrons of the 
store, but all of their neighbors. While by the correct 
and courteous handling of both he may not only retain 
trade for it but bring new customers to its doors. 

Let us now suppose that milady does not live in 
either Manhattan, Brooklyn or the Bronx, but in one 
of those smart suburbs: Forest Hills, New Rochelle, 
Englewood or the Oranges, to pick four or five out of 
many. She still is well within the limits of Macy's 
own delivery service. If she lives in the first of 
these — Forest Hills — she will be served, not direct 
from the Herald Square establishment, but from the 
little Long Island community of Queens. Fifteen 
wagon and motor truck routes run from the Macy sub- 
station there, which in turn is fed by the merchandise 
coming out over the great Queensborough bridge, each 
evening, on heavy five-ton trucks. And, to go back 
even further, these have been filled from the super- 



Distributing the Goods 195 

sized compartments at the end of the conveyor-chute 
marked "Suburban." 

Similarly, if she dwell in New Rochelle, she will be 
served by one of the fifteen motor trucks running out 
from the sub-station at Woodlawn, remembered by 
travelers upon the trains to Boston chiefly as the place 
of the enormous cemetery. It serves the great sub- 
urban territory north of the direct delivery routes out 
from the main store — a line drawn through Kings- 
bridge and Pelham Avenue — out as far as Ossining, 
Mt. Kisco and Stamford. 

Englewood and the New Jersey territory roundabout 
are served by Macy's Hackensack sub-station, with nine 
more routes j while the Oranges, mighty Newark, 
Montclair and that immediate vicinage draws its mer- 
chandise through a fourth sub-station, right in the heart 
of Newark, itself, -and operating ten regular motor 
truck routes. The fifth and last all-the-year sub- 
station is at West New Brighton, Staten Island. It 
serves that far-flung and least populated of New 
York's five boroughs, Richmond. 

In the summer months another sub-station is added 
to the list, at Seabright, down on the New Jersey coast, 
and serving all those populous resorts from the Atlantic 
Highlands on the north to Spring Lake on the south. 
This is an expensive feature of Macy service, and one 
for which the store receives no extra compensation. 
It is one of the many expensive things that must be 
charged to profit-and-loss or the somewhat indefinite 
"overhead" — indefinite enough when one comes to con- 
sider its ramifications, but always fairly definite in its 



196 The Romance of a Great Store 

drain upon the daily financial balances of the store. 

At each of these sub-stations there are, in addition to 
the fairly obvious necessary facilities for re-sorting the 
merchandise, complete garage facilities for the wagons 
and trucks running out from them; these, of course, 
are in addition to the store's main stables and garages 
in West Nineteenth Street and also in West Thirty- 
eighth, Manhattan. Together all of these form a very 
considerable fleet upon wheels, with a personnel in 
keeping. For the delivery routes alone, and taking no 
account of the sizable force employed in the upkeep of 
vehicles and horses, there are employed, in the city 
service of the store, one hundred and ninety drivers 
and chauffeurs, with one hundred and eighty-six 
helpers, and in the suburban service, seventy-four 
drivers and eighty-six helpers. 

Through the hands of these there pours a constant 
and a terrific stream of merchandise. The conveying 
system in the basement of the Herald Square store has 
a generous maximum carrying capacity of five thousand 
packages an hour — a capacity which sometimes is 
actually reached toward the close of an exceptionally 
busy day, say toward the end of the pre-Christmas 
season. Twenty-five thousand packages is an average 
day's work for that basement room; upon occasion it 
has gone well over forty-one thousand. It should be 
borne in mind, moreover, that a package does not 
always represent a single purchase; in fact, it rarely 
does. Inside of one assembled package — generally 
assembled, as we saw in a previous chapter, at the store's 
transfer desk — there may be all the way from two to 



Distributing the Goods 197 

ten separate parcels. You may take your own guess as 
to the average number. 

Here, then, is the great and complicated system in 
its simplest form. Its ramifications are many and 
astonishing. For instance, milady is apt at times to 
change her mind. Yes, she is. And send the package 
back. Even though not as often in Macy's as in the 
charge account stores. Here is another decided benefit 
in the cash system — not alone to the store, but, because 
of its habit of passing on its economies, to its patrons 
as well. Yet in the course of a year a considerable 
number of packages must come back. Despite a 
thorough educational system and constant oversight and 
admonition there is bound to be a percentage of incor- 
rect address slips. These and other causes produce a 
certain definite return flow of merchandise j which must 
have its own forms and safeguards, for the protection 
both of the store and its customer. They all make 
detail, but extremely necessary detail. 

In the basement there is a store room whose broad 
shelves hold a variety of merchandise, bought and paid 
for, but never delivered. The store makes at least 
two attempts to deliver every article given to its 
delivery department. That department is unusually 
clever with telephone books, club lists and other less 
used avenues of finding recalcitrant addresses. But 
there come times when even its resourcefulness is 
entirely baffled. Then the undelivered goods must go 
to the store room until some properly accredited human 
being comes up somewhere, sometime to demand them. 



198 The Romance of a Great Store 

In an astonishing number of cases the some one does not 
come up sometime or somewhere. In such a case after 
a fair length of time the goods themselves go back to 
stock. But the record of the transaction stays accessible 
in the store's files, so that its bureau of investigation, at 
any future time, may order a duplicate of the lost ship- 
ment out of the stock — out of the open market if the 
stock then fails to hold it — in order that Macy's may 
keep full faith with its patrons. 

Such a holdover is, of course, to be entirely distin- 
guished from those which are held in advance of 
delivery j in certain cases up to thirty days without 
advance payment, in others up to sixty upon partial 
payment and in still others up to six months after full 
payment. This last, however, is a merchandising 
procedure quite common to most retail establishments. 

One feature of the delivery department remains for 
our consideration} the branch of it which is situated 
upon the ninth floor and which, oddly enough, handles 
the heaviest merchandise shipped out of the store — 
furniture. There are, of course, heavy shipments that 
go out of the basements — hundreds of them on an 
average that are entirely too heavy for the conveyor- 
chutes and the "revolving-ring." A notable one of 
these is an electric washing-machine, which, crated, will 
weigh slightly in excess of two hundred pounds. 
Shipments such as these go to the basement on hand 
trucks and by the freight elevators. There they are 
boxed and crated; often a considerable job. As a rule 
the expert packers of the delivery department can put 



Distributing the Goods 199 

even a fairly sizable or unwieldy purchase into boxing 
within twelve or fifteen minutes 5 an elaborate and 
fragile bit of statuary has been known to take a full 
hour and a half before it was safely prepared for wagon 
shipment. 

Likewise the furniture craters upon the ninth floor 
of times find their job a sizable one indeed. The box- 
ing of a divan or a dining-room table is no easy task 
whatsoever. And in cases where the delivery is to be 
made within the limits of Macy service it is often 
avoided entirely. The freight elevators of the store 
are of the largest size ever designed j so big that a 
heavy motor truck is no particular strain upon their 
individual capacity. One of these trucks can be and is 
driven straight to and from the ninth floor. After it 
has reached the department the placing of fine furniture 
in its cavernous interior is merely a nicety of planning 
and arrangement, a skillful use of ropes and blankets 
and padding. The truck may run to any point within 
forty or fifty miles of the store at less cost than crating} 
even though crating be done at cost, itself. 

So spread the tentacles of Macy's, those long arms of 
distribution that keep the store from ever being a 
merely abstract thing. The bright red and yellow 
wagons and trucks — each bearing its good-luck symbol 
of the red star — carry Herald Square to the far limits 
of a far-flung city. The men who ride them are upon 
the outposts of salesmanship. Yet through system 
and through organization they are forever closely con- 
nected with it. The blood that courses through your 



200 The Romance of a Great Store 

finger-tips comes straight from your heart. The life- 
blood of understanding, of enthusiasm, of morale, that 
Macy's outriders bring with them is the life-blood of 
the humanized machine that functions so steadily there 
in the heart of Manhattan. 



VI. The Macy Family 

IN the bazaars of ancient Bagdad, the human factor 
was not only the great but the sole dominating 
influence. The ancient Bagdadians, including those 
commuters and suburbanites, far and near, who came 
cameling into town at more or less frequent intervals, 
did business, not with a machine, not with a system, 
but with men. Which, being freely translated, meant 
bargaining. They not merely bargained, but haggled, 
and haggled at great length. Prices? There were 
none. The price was what you made it — you and the 
merchant with whom you finally came to agreement j 
if finally you did come to agreement. 

In the great bazaars of the modern Bagdad one does 
not need to bargain or to haggle. One is doing busi- 
ness primarily with a system. Prices are fixed, and 
firmly fixed. This is so generally understood and 
accepted a rule today that it would be a mere waste of 
time to discuss it at further length, save possibly to 
recall once again the large part which Rowland Hussey 
Macy and the men who followed him played in giving 
a Gibraltar-like firmness to this solid modern business 
principle. 

Yet even in these same modern, scientifically organ- 
ized bazaars of today, the system rarely ever can be 

201 



202 The Romance of a Great Store 

better than the men who direct it. Four thousand 
years of business progress between the two Bagdads 
have not taken from man his God-given power to make 
or break the best of systems. And Macy's, with its 
own business system organized, carefully developed 
and upbuilded through sixty-three long years, is still 
dependent to no little degree upon the faith and 
loyalty and interest of its men and women j that same 
thing which in the days of the war just past we first 
learned to know by that new name — morale. 

Under the sign of the Red Star there are at all times 
these days not less than five thousand workers} in the 
Christmas season this pay-roll list runs quickly to seven 
thousand or over. Then it is that the Macy family 
takes its most impressive dimensions. Seven thousand 
souls! It is the population of a good sized town! It 
is four good regiments — it is the New York Hippo- 
drome with every one of its seats filled and eighteen 
hundred folk left standing up ! 

Yet even the all-the-year minimum of five thousand 
men and women — roughly speaking, one-third men 
and two-thirds women — is an impressive array. It is 
a human force which only gains impressiveness when 
one finds that all but three hundred of it are employed 
beneath a single roof. The small outside group chiefly 
comprises those in the delivery stations. 

To bring action, foresight, co-operation, correlation — 
and finally morale — into such a force is a thing not 
gained by merely talking or thinking about it, but by 
long study, experimentation and great continued effort. 



The Macy Family 203 

Which means, in turn, that Macy's, among several 
other things, is a responsibility. For, as we shall 
presently see, there are any number of problems in 
addition to those of buying and selling j problems in 
the solving of which unceasing demands are made upon 
the store's time, money and heart. It is, in the last 
analysis a matter of mere good business at that. Yet 
at Macy's it has been considerably more. And the 
store's satisfaction in realizing that it was a very early 
and a very advanced pioneer in developing personnel — 
and morale — as necessary factors in modern mer- 
chandising is a very large one indeed. 

A machine or a family — or a department-store — is 
only as good as its component parts, and by the fact 
that there is a strict interdependence between the whole 
and its parts, the success of Macy's must mean that the 
rank and file of its employees maintain a high average 
of intelligence, initiative and loyalty. That these 
qualities are successfully co-ordinated in Macy's is due 
to real leadership, and it is to this same leadership that 
we may look for the basis of the store's morale. 

Little things indicate. And indicate clearly. Here 
on the wall of the passageway at the head of the main 
employee's stair is a placard which reads: 

"Once each month three prizes are given to the 
employees who make the best suggestions for the better- 
ment of store service or conditions. Don't hesitate to 
try for a prize, even if your suggestion does not appear 
important. We need your ideas and like to have as 
many as possible presented each month. Write plainly 



204 The Romance of a Great Store 

and drop your suggestions in the boxes furnished for 
this purpose. The first prize is $10.00, the second 
$5.00, and the third $2.00." 

Here is only a single one of the many evidences of 
Macy co-operation with the employees. Yet it illus- 
trates clearly the house's policy of making its workers 
feel an interest in and beyond the mere amount of 
money that they draw at the end of the week. Not a 
few of these prizes are awarded for suggestions as to 
procedure in technical matters relating to the details of 
the business. Some of them result in the saving of 
time — and consequently money — and others in the 
improvement of working conditions. For example: 
ten dollars was awarded to the man who suggested that 
the doors of fitting-rooms be equipped with signals to 
show whether or not they are occupied} five dollars 
went to the one who made the suggestion that the fire- 
axe and hook standing in the corner of the customers' 
stairway be placed on the wall in a suitable case so that 
children could not play with them; two dollars to her 
who advanced the very reasonable idea that a scratch- 
pad in the 'phone booths would prevent memoranda 
and art manifestations being made upon the walls. 
Here are a few suggestions that were proffered and 
acted upon. The entire list runs to a considerable 
length. 

There is another notice upon the big bulletin board 
at the head of the employees' stairs — a sort of town- 
crier affair with temporary and permanent notices of 
interest to the store's workers — which tells the working 
force that when vacancies occur within the big store 



The Macy Family 10$ 

they will be promptly posted on this and other bulletin 
boards. The workers are advised to apply for any 
position which they may feel they are competent to 
fill. Ambition is not curbed in Macy's. On the 
contrary, it is stimulated to every possible extent. The 
employee is restricted only by his own limitations, if 
he has them. It is a firmly-fixed house policy to pro- 
mote, wherever it is at all possible, from its own ranks. 
Among its high-salaried men and women are not a few 
who have worked their way up from the bottom. In 
fact, among these six or eight of the best paid men in 
the store, is one who boasts that he first came to New 
York fifteen years ago, with but a suitcase and eleven 
dollars in his pocket. 

The employment department must have been very 
much on the job when it hired this man. It generally 
is very much on its job. 

Obviously, the hiring of workers for an enterprise 
as huge as Macy's cannot be conducted on any hit-and- 
miss plan. We have gone far enough with the store in 
these pages to see that hit-and-miss does not figure at 
any time or place in its varied functionings — and no- 
where less than in its employment department. The 
hiring of new workers for the store is indeed a branch 
of the business machine that receives constant and great 
care and systematic attention. A store must employ 
the right sort of people in order to be a good store. 
This is fairly axiomatic these days. 

These workers are gathered in a variety of ways — 
by volunteer applications, by newspaper advertisements 
(in New York and outside of it), by outside free 



206 The Romance of a Great Store 

employment agencies, by circular appeals generally to 
educational institutions, and, best of all, through the 
solicitation of its regular employees. There is no 
appeal for a worker that, in my opinion, can compare 
with the suggestion made by an employee that the place 
of his or her employment is a good place for his or her 
friends, as well. 

I am warmly concurred with in this opinion by the 
store's employment manager, a big, upstanding man, 
who in his Harvard days was a famous football player. 
The rules of that fine game he has brought to the 
understanding of his present problem. 

"One of the most desirable class of applicants is that 
brought by our own employees," he says, frankly, "as 
in hiring these people we have a feeling of security} 
especially if they have been brought in by some of the 
old and most loyal employees. It has been our experi- 
ence that such applicants enter more readily into the 
spirit of their work and develop more rapidly than 
those obtained from other sources. We advertise in 
the classified columns of the newspapers only when it 
is absolutely necessary. Our regular daily advertise- 
ments keep the store constantly before the public eye — 
and generally that is enough. 

"During the recent war period, however, we had no 
scruples about advertising, as nearly every other line of 
endeavor was in the same boat as we. Never before 
have the newspapers carried so much classified adver- 
tising. Yet when all is said and done, besides the 
moral undesirability of this source of supply, we found 
it also very expensive indeed. 



The Macy Family 207 

"Some people believe that the function of an employ- 
ment department is merely to keep in touch with the 
labor market and engage employees," he continued. 
"This is erroneous. The duty of this employment 
department is to raise the standard of efficiency of the 
whole working force by the proper selection, placing, 
following up and promotion of employees and so bring- 
ing about a condition that will result in their rendering 
as nearly as possible one hundred per cent, service to 
the store. That is the real reason why employment 
departments such as this first came into existence. 
Business some years ago awoke to the realization of the 
fact that its indiscriminate handling of the entire labor 
problem was causing a tremendous economic waste, not 
alone to the employee and to society, but to itself. It 
then began for the first time to deal with the problem 
of its personnel in a scientific and practical way." 

The market for workers — like pretty nearly every 
other sort of market — is, as we have just seen, subject 
to fluctuations j there are seasons when the employment 
manager — ranking as the store's fourth assistant general 
manager — must look sharply about him for the main- 
tenance of its ranks, other seasons when long files of 
would-be workers present themselves each morning at 
his department doors. For the five or six years of the 
World War period the first set of conditions prevailed. 
It was difficult for any department-store, ranked by the 
Washington authorities in war days as a non-essential 
industry, always to maintain its full working force, to 
say nothing of its morale. Recently the pendulum 



20 8 The Romance of a Great Store 

has swung in the other direction. America is not 
exempt from the labor conditions which are prevailing 
in the other great nations of the world. And there are 
plenty of people who would work in Macy's. Yet the 
store has refused to use this situation as a club over its 
workers. Throughout the darkest days of the business 
depression it told them that it had no intention either 
of reducing its force of workers (beyond the usual 
lay-off of extra Christmas people) or of reducing their 
individual salaries. Which was a considerable help to 
its Esprit de corps. 

Yet even in the hardest days of labor shortage Macy's 
never ceased to be most particular as to the quality of 
its help. Applicants for positions underneath its roof 
were scrutinized with great care to make sure as to their 
desirability as additions to the organization. And 
before they finally were accepted and turned over to 
the training school, they were examined, with as much 
thoroughness as if there were hundreds of others in the 
file behind them, from whom the store might pick and 
choose. 

All this is part and parcel of the definite manage- 
ment policy of the employment department, just as it 
is part of its policy to make sure that the prospective 
member of the Macy family has more than one arrow 
to his or her quiver. Alternate capabilities are assets 
not to be scorned. And there is an obvious store 
flexibility in being able to use its human units in a 
variety of endeavor that the management can hardly 
afford to ignore. And it does not. 



The Macy Family 209 

There is a function of the employment department 
of the modern business machine that Macy's recognizes 
as second in importance only to that of engaging its 
workers. I am referring to that moment when they 
may leave its employ, either from choice or otherwise. 
If "otherwise" — in the colloquial phrasing of the store 
being "laid-off" — there is the greatest of care and 
discretion used. 

"Remember the Golden Rule," says its general 
manager to his assistants, and says it again and again. 
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 
And remember that there is never a time when this 
Golden Rule is more necessary or applicable in business 
than in the moment of discharge." 

Translated into the terms of hard fact this means 
that in Macy's no buyer, no department head, no de- 
partment manager has the power to dismiss one of his 
workers. He may recommend the "lay-off" but only 
the general manager himself may actually accomplish 
the act. In which case he first refers the case to one 
of his five assistants, for personal investigation and 
recommendation. 

When the saleswoman — or man, as the case may 
be — leaves of her own volition the matter becomes, in 
certain senses, more serious. Why is she dissatisfied? 
Are the conditions of labor more onerous at Macy's 
than in the other stores of the city, the remuneration 
less satisfactory? Macy's does not intend that either 
of these causes shall obtain beneath its roof. So the 
retiring employee, before she may leave its pay-roll, is 
carefully examined as to her reasons for going. The 



210 The Romance of a Great Store 

last impressions of the store must be quite as good as 
the earliest ones — even upon the minds of its workers. 
And a careful system of observation and of record has 
been upbuilded to make sure that this is being obtained j 
which may often lead to valuable opportunities for the 
correction of store system, particularly in the relation- 
ship between Macy's and its employees. 

We come now face to face with the training depart- 
ment — another individual organization strong enough 
and important enough to demand as its head an officer 
of the rank and title of assistant general manager. 
But before we come to consider it in some of the many 
aspects of its workings — before we come to see 
how in these recent years education has come to be the 
hand-maiden of merchandising, let us consider the 
actual experience of a young woman who recently 
entered the employment of the store. She was a col- 
lege woman — a good many of the store people are these 
days. The mass of young women who come trooping 
out of our colleges each June are apt to find their 
employment bents trending more or less to a common 
course and in great cycles. Yesterday the cycle was 
teaching^ the day before, literature or the sciences j 
today it is merchandising. The great department- 
stores of our metropolitan cities in America are, as we 
already know, today paying their executives and sub- 
executives salaries more than commensurate with the 
earnings of those in other lines of industry and well 
ahead of those in the learned professions. Moreover, 
they have brought their hours of employment down to 



I 



4 y 










l C«"? 



THE SCIENCE OF MODERN SALESMANSHIP 

Education places the saleswoman of today at highest efficiency. 
A Macy schoolroom 



The Macy Family 211 

a point at least approaching those of other business 
organizations. Their appeal thus has become measur- 
ably greater. And they are reaping the reward — in 
the attraction of a higher grade of executive young 
women. 

This young woman was of that type. And here is 
how she came to Macy's — told in her own words: 

"Not at all long, long ago, I went rather hesitatingly 
into the rooms labeled 'employment office' at Macy's. 
'Hesitatingly' because, if you have ever gone around 
very much looking for a job, you know that 'Welcome' 
is not always written on the door-mat that receives you. 
But it is at Macy's — and a woman, who made me feel 
that she was my friend by the warmth of her smile, 
talked with me and after filling out the usual blanks I 
was told when to report for work. They were mighty 
decent, too, about trying to place me selling the kind 
of merchandise that I wanted to sell — and that means 
a lot! 

"The Monday morning that I came to work was, of 
course, rather hard — it's not easy to go into any strange 
and new place and be crazy about it right at first! 
There were a lot of us — all new girls — and it was fun 
to see what they did to us. We went from the em- 
ployment office, where there is a good sign reading 
'Say "we" not "I" and "ours" not "my",' to our locker 
room (which, by the way, is the best of any of the 
places I have ever worked in) and then up to the train- 
ing department for a little first time; after which they 
sent us to our respective departments. We felt rather 
like ping-pong balls, being knocked hither and thither, 



212 The Romance of a Great Store 

and though we didn't know why we were doing any of 
these things we trusted that those holding the ping- 
pong bat did. 

"While we were waiting up there in the training 
department, we had a chance to get to know each other 
a little — two or three of us were charmingly Irish — 
and time to note the people busy about that depart- 
ment. Nice efficient-looking people they were — and 
of course we labeled and cubby-holed them. One 
man, we all decided, could well be a matinee idol and 
another might have hailed from down Greenwich 
Village way. 

"At last we parted and went down through the store 
to our own departments — and on the way any im- 
portance which we may have felt was quickly sub- 
merged in seeing what a distressingly small part we 
were of the large Macy organization. Even so, we 
later found out how many, many other 'we's' like each 
of us could make a deal of trouble for it, should we 
fail to carry on our work correctly. A talk we had 
from the store manager, a little later on, made me feel 
directly responsible to the poor fellows who are the 
Macy delivery men. If I were not careful to write 
the address clearly in my salesbook, the delivery man 
would get in trouble — and all because of my hand- 
writing! Funny, how we were all linked up together. 

"Well, to go back, I got to my department feeling 
decidedly unimportant, and was put to work behind a 
counter which sold women's and children's woolen 
gloves and women's kid gloves. That was the first 
counter I had ever sold from. In other stores I have 



The Macy Family 213 

sold from what are known as 'open departments'} the 
counter trade was a revelation to me. Did you ever 
notice the lack of space behind the counters in the 
stores? Well, with the Christmas rush and all the 
extra salesgirls, it is lucky indeed that some of us have 
a sense of humor. 

"I had not been behind the counter for two whole 
minutes before a customer came along and asked for 
something. I tried to look wise and answer. It was 
all terribly new. The customers are always so plenti- 
ful in Macy's that a new girl hardly has time to have 
the old girls tell her about the stock. Moreover, our 
counter was very near the store's main entrance — 
which meant that we were an informal but very busy 
little information bureau on our own account — not only 
about Macy's but apparently anything else in the city 
of New York. 

"Of course, I didn't have a salesbook that day; I 
didn't receive one until after I had had some training 
and was beginning to know something about the Macy 
system. However, customers could not see the 'new- 
and-green' written on my face, so I waited on them 
thick and fast; even through that first morning. And 
a wild time I had of it — gym was never so exhausting 
as stooping down to look for a certain pair of gloves 
which must be a certain color combined with a certain 
size, plus a certain style and so on. Some people must 
stay up nights figuring along the lines of permutations 
and combinations, so as to work out some unheard of 
ones for the things they ask for in Macy's. The other 
girls were mighty nice to me, though, and as helpful 



214 The Romance of a Great Store 

as could be. And our having to almost walk upon 
one another and squeezing past and bumping so often — 
why, you all get clubby, mighty soon. At the end of 
that first day I was rather wrecked, though happy — 
for in my desire to find things for customers speedily 
I had, in bending down, burst through the knee of one 
stocking, broken a corset-stay and ripped loose a garter! 
Henceforth I managed to dress in a manner prepared 
for doing gymnastic stunts, such as deep-knee-bending 
and leap-frog. 

"My first lesson on the store system came on my first 
day in the store — and then one every day for an hour, 
during the whole first week. I liked that — for then 
I knew how things were supposed to be done. They 
even took us out into departments that were not busy 
early in the morning and had us make out certain kinds 
of sales right behind the counter, and carry the whole 
thing through- — all that was lacking being the real 
customer. It gave us confidence and showed us things 
that we thought we knew, but that, when it came right 
down to it, we didn't know at all. The training 
department also gave us pamphlets and notices about 
how to use the telephones and telling us to do certain 
things, as well as how our salary and commission were 
to be figured. Also one leaflet told us about Macy's 
underselling policy, and what we should do in case a 
customer reported merchandise as being cheaper some- 
where else — and, although I had heard before of this 
policy of Macy's, I came to believe in it faithfully, 
after I had read the booklet. 

"When you're new in a department the 'higher up* 



The Macy Family 215 

man can do much to make you feel glad that you are 
there. My section manager and buyer were both fine. 
The buyer told us in a talk she gave us all about how 
she'd been with Macy's for twenty-five years j that she 
had worked for several years, when she first began, at 
six dollars a week. She made us feel that there surely 
must be a chance for every one of us — that a firm that 
is worth staying with that long must be pretty fine 
indeed — and that it was just up to us individually, 
whether or not we would go ahead. As for our section 
manager, he was always so nice in the way he handled 
any transaction with us — giving us an extended lunch- 
hour or signing any sales checks that needed his c O. K.' 
In many stores the section managers are so disagreeable 
about doing their work that the salesgirls hate to have 
them 'O. K.' things — but I have found it quite the 
opposite at Macy's. And when he had the time and 
saw any of us looking glum or tired our man would 
talk to us and succeed in cheering us up. 

"There are many things, too, that I discovered 
Macy's doing for its employees — all sorts of clubs and 
parties. One of the most useful of the first of these I 
found to be the umbrella club. Ail I had to do one 
day when it began unexpectedly to rain was to go up 
to the training department, deposit fifty cents and 
receive an umbrella. If I left Macy's within the 
month, I would get my fifty cents back. Of course, 
I was to return the umbrella the very first clear day 
but any time thereafter that I needed one I could go 
upstairs and get it. 

"Then, too, there's the recreation room — you have 



2i6 The Romance of a Great Store 

two fifteen-minute relief periods a day in the store in 
addition to your lunch time. You can go to the dress- 
ing rooms and wash up a bit and then go to the 
recreation room, where there are plenty of large, comfy 
chairs, a piano, books and the like. The room is a 
veritable social center all the day long — I always found 
lots of friends there, no matter at what time I took my 
relief periods. And you go back to your work 
refreshed and 'full of pep' once again. Another place 
where you have a chance to see your friends is the 
employees' lunchroom — and it certainly is a popular 
place. Despite the clatter and rush, the Macy folks 
have a good time in their cafeteria j the crowds that eat 
there every day prove the wholesomeness of its food. 
It is good home cooking and, as far as its cheapness is 
concerned — well, I've eaten veritable dinners there at 
the noon hour, day after day, and never had my check 
total more than twenty-five cents 5 with thirteen or 
fifteen nearer the average. 

"One morning we all came early to the store — to a 
courtesy rally. Thousands of us — yes, literally thou- 
sands of us — gathered on the main floor, on the central 
stair and everywhere roundabout it, and we sang songs 
about smiling} and other optimistic things. Then, 
after good addresses by Mr. Straus and Mr. Spillman, 
we all sang again and, in response to an inquiry from 
one of the store executives, all shouted that we would 
try to carry on with the new Macy slogan of C A smile 
with every package' and c a thank you as goodbye.' " 

Frank testimony, indeed. And honest. 



The Macy Family 217 

To bring this atmosphere about the worker in the 
store may no more be the result of hit-and-miss than 
the right sort of hiring. In the modern marts of the 
new Bagdad the creation of morale, not merely the 
retention of a good industrial relationship between a 
store and its workers but a constant bettering of it, has 
come to be as important a problem as that of the buying 
or the delivering of its merchandise, or even its 
problems of making its public constantly acquainted 
with its offerings and advantages. 

The work of such a department — in Macy's the 
department of training — divides itself quite logically 
and clearly into two great avenues j the one educational, 
the other recreational. Each takes hold of the new- 
comer to the store almost from the very moment that 
he or she enters upon its lists of employment. The 
new salesgirl's name is hardly upon the rolls of the 
department to which she is assigned before a member 
of the store's reception committee is upon her heels and 
steering her straight through all the maze of fresh 
experiences that necessarily must await the novitiate. 
She is told all about her time disc of brass — the indi- 
vidual coin that bears her distinctive number (built up 
of her department number plus her own serial one) 
which she must drop into its allotted slot at th^ 
employees' entrance when she comes to it in the morn^ 
ing and which she must see is returned to her before 
the day is done in order that she may have it to use 
again upon the morrow j how, going from the locker 
room to her department at the day's beginning, she 
must sign its own time-roll, which then becomes 



21 8 The Romance of a Great Store 

accountable for her comings and goings through the 
rest of the day; how she can go and when she must 
return j how she is paid — her salary, her quota, her 
commissions, her bonuses. 

All of this might sound complicated, indeed, to the 
new girl, were it not for the kindness of her assigned 
"committeeman." Complications in the hands of a 
woman who has been through the mill, herself, and 
who has come to see how they are really not compli- 
cations at all, but cogs in the grinding wheels of a great 
and systematic machine, are easily explained. The 
new girl catches on. The simple but accurate psycho- 
logical tests through which she was put before she was 
accepted for Macy's assure this. She catches on and 
within a year — perhaps within a space of but a few 
months — she, herself, is on the reception committee 
and helping other new girls through the maze of first 
employment. 

The new girl catches on — 

There lies before me, as I write these paragraphs, a 
neatly typewritten loose-leaf memorandum book. It 
is the work of a girl who has yet to round out her first 
year in Macy's and it is a work that all must produce 
before they may hope for very definite advancement. 

This typewritten book is, in itself, a book of the 
Macy store. Its pages are a brief, succinct and thorough 
account of the store's organization, its selling policies — 
including, of course, the stressed under-selling policy — 
and its methods. Yet it is much more, too. It is, if 
you please, a manual of salesmanship. Under a 
heading, "Steps in an Ideal Sale," these are not only 



The Macy Family 219 

enumerated but are given relative values in percentages. 
Thus we see that "attracting attention" is twenty per 
cent, j "arousing interest," twenty j "creating desire," 
fifteen j "closing sale," twenty j "introducing new mer- 
chandise," ten 5 and "securing good will," fifteen. 
Under each of these sub-heads, the salesclerk has col- 
lected a group of points necessary to their attainment. 
Thus, under "attracting attention" one finds "facial 
expression" and under it, in turn, "pleasant and 
expectant." 

All of these things have been taught the salesgirl 
author of this book — -the volume, itself, is the result 
of her notes at her lecture classes. When she is taught 
"attracting attention" she is told that alongside of 
"facial expression" there comes "tone of voice," and 
under this last there are five distinct classifications: 
"audible, distinct, sincere, rhythmical, suited to cus- 
tomer." Truly the science of salesmanship goes to far 
lengths these days. From time to time the store has 
engaged a professional teacher of elocution to take up 
and carry forward this last function of its work. Here 
is this saleswoman being taught that "swell" is a word 
forever to be avoided over the counter, "smart," 
"stylish," "fashionable," "original," and some others 
being substituted. Similarly "elegant," "grand," 
"nifty," "classy," "cheap," "awfully" and "ter- 
ribly" are under the ban, appropriate synonyms being 
suggested to replace them. "Flat" is not to be used, 
when "apartment" is meant. The entire list of words 
to be avoided in a Macy sales conversation runs to a 
considerable length. 



220 The Romance of a Great Store 

This particular saleswoman was trained to textile 
salesmanship. Consequently, although the first half 
of her book, which treats of the store's methods and 
policies, is common to those that are being prepared by 
her fellows in all the other selling departments, the 
second half is the result of the special training that 
was given her in the department of training along the 
lines of her own merchandise. Not only did she spend 
long hours of the firm's time in its classroom upon the 
third floor of the store and surrounded by cabinets in 
which were displayed textile materials of every sort 
and in every stage of development, but she was given 
a printed booklet which told her much about her mer- 
chandise, its history, its production fields and the details 
of its manufacture. 

From it she evolved her own history of textiles, 
setting down with accuracy the four fundamental 
cloths — cotton, linen, silk and wool — and not alone 
tracing their development and manufacture, but by 
means of carefully hand-made diagrams, pointing out 
the difference between the different textures and weav- 
ings. "Warp" and "weft" and "twill" have come to 
be more than mere words to her. They are a part of 
her business capital, which she can — and does — turn to 
the good account of the store. So she is to her compeer 
of twenty-five years ago — selling dress-goods in the old 
Macy store down on Fourteenth Street — as the electric 
light of today is to the old-fashioned lamps of that day 
and generation. 

Back of this little black-bound notebook there is 



The Macy Family 221 

system — organization if you would read it that way. 
Education, of a truth, has become the handmaiden of 
merchandising. And the store's school has become one 
of its ranking functions. 

As teachers in this school there is a specially trained 
corps of men and women who do nothing but instruct 
and then follow up their pupils to see that they put 
into practice the things that they have learned. The 
educational work consists of individual instruction, 
informal classes and practical demonstrations. And 
the result of it all is not merely to make the employee 
valuable to the house, but to lend interest to mer- 
chandising, itself, and to lift the salesperson out of the 
mere mechanical process of taking orders for goods. 

The moment that a new employee comes into the 
Macy store his or her instruction in its system, organi- 
zation and salesmanship begins. We have just seen 
how one typical new saleswoman began receiving her 
training from the first day of her employment. She 
was no exception to an inflexible rule. The training 
is given invariably. It does not matter whether the 
applicant has had experience in other large department- 
stores. Even a former Macy employee, accepting 
re-employment, must go through the department of 
training for, like everything that grows, the store 
system changes steadily from year to year and from 
month to month. 

A school such as this must have teachers. It is 
futile to add that they must be specially trained and 
thoroughly competent in every way to fulfill the 



222 The Romance of a Great Store 

unusual task set before them. And this, of itself, has 
been a problem, not alone with Macy's, but with the 
other large department-stores of New York. They 
have co-operated to solve it, with the direct result that 
some two or three years ago retail store training became 
a practical factor in the city's educational system. 
Under the enthusiastic aid of Doctor Lee Galloway, its 
head, the successful and rapidly expanding business 
division of New York University created the school of 
retail selling, bearing the name of and affiliated with 
the parent institution. The merchants of New York 
raised a fund of $100,000 for the establishment and 
promotion of this enterprise and from it last June came 
its first graduating class — young men and women 
qualified to teach store training in the great bazaars of 
our modern Bagdad. 

The purposes of this school are set forth succinctly in 
its first manual, which has come off the press. Its 
object is "to dignify retail selling through education in 
the following ways: To train teachers in retail selling 
for public high schools and for retail stores, to train 
employees of retail stores for executive positions and 
to do special research work for the department 
managers of retail stores." 

In accordance with the first of these expressed 
avenues of its endeavors the Board of Estimate of the 
city of New York already has begun to move in full 
co-operation. A high school in the lower west side of 
Manhattan — the Haaren High School at Hubert and 
Collister Streets — has been designated as training center 
for this work. Girls are there being taught retail 



The Macy Family 223 

selling. Nearly one hundred already are entered in 
the course and within a few short months the larger 
stores of the city will begin to benefit by this highly 
practical educational work. 

That this experiment will prove successful seems 
now to be well beyond the shadows of doubt. Yet 
such success will be in no small measure due to the 
individual efforts of Dr. Michael H. Lucey, principal 
of the Julia Richman High School — in West Thir- 
teenth Street, just back of Macy's original store — who 
has devoted great energies to its launching. Con- 
vinced, from the outset, of the real necessity of a train- 
ing course in retail selling in the city schools, Dr. Lucey 
makes no secret of his dubious fears at the beginning 
of the experiment: 

"I honestly didn't see how we were going to do it," 
he says, in frankly discussing the entire matter, "the 
tradition in favor of an office career rather than a selling 
one in a store has so long ruled in the high schools of 
the city. There are several reasons for this — the most 
important one, in my mind, the feeling in the average 
high school girl's head that less education having been 
required in past years for the girl behind the counter 
than for the girl behind the typewriter, she lost a certain 
definite sort of caste, if she followed the first of these 
callings. Of course, that is utter rubbish. I have no 
hesitancy today in telling my girls that if they are 
looking for a genuine career retail selling is the thing 
for them. In office work, if they are very good, they 
may get up to forty or even fifty dollars a week but 



224 The Romance of a Great Store 

there they are pretty nearly sure to come to a 
standstill." 

The skilled educator shakes his head as he says this. 

"You see the difficulty is that so many girls coming 
out of schools such as these look upon business not as a 
boy would look at it, as a career with indefinite and 
permanent possibilities, but rather as a bridge between 
schooling and matrimony — a bridge of but four, or five, 
or six years. And when they are frank with me — and 
they often are — and tell me of this bridge that is in 
their minds, I am frank to advise office work. It offers 
better immediate returns — yet in the long run none that 
are even comparable with those of a high-grade 
department-store." 

Following the successful plan of the University of 
Cincinnati in its technical engineering courses, the 
students down at Haaren are grouped into working 
pairs, which means that, in practice and working in 
alternation, each goes to school every other week. In 
the week that one is in the classroom, her partner is in 
one of the city stores studying retail selling at first 
hand. When, at the end of six days, she returns to her 
schoolroom she has many questions derived from her 
actual practice to put to her instructor. So the practice 
and the principles of this new hard-headed science are 
kept hand in hand with its actual workings. 

Nor is this all: some six or seven hundred young 
women — and young men, too — are also making a 
special study of retail selling in the city's evening 
schools. A single course at the DeWitt Clinton High 



The Macy Family 225 

School is quite typical of these. Four evenings a week, 
for two hours each evening, a huge class is being 
taught — in an even more detailed way than is possible 
under a department-store roof — the principles and 
manufacture of textiles. In these classes a goodly 
number of the Macy family are enrolled. Another 
goodly enrollment goes into the special lectures given 
by a museum instructor at the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art on certain evenings and Sunday afternoons. 

Truly, indeed, education has become the handmaiden 
of merchandising. 

As teachers in Macy's department of training there 
are enrolled today only those men and women who 
have received a thorough normal school education in 
this great new science of retailing. They do nothing 
but instruct the store's workers and then follow up to 
make sure that these are putting into practice the prin- 
ciples in which they have just been instructed. Except 
for the training of the future executives the school time 
is taken entirely from regular business hours and so, at 
the expense of the house, itself. This schooling — 
under the Macy roof, please remember — consists of 
individual instruction, informal classes and practical 
demonstration. 

Specialized training under the roof includes instruc- 
tion under the direct supervision of the Board of 
Education in fundamental school subjects to those 
classed as "juniors" and "delinquent seniors"} a junior 
salesmanship course given to all employees promoted 
from the non-selling divisions of the store to its selling 



226 The Romance of a Great Store 

divisions j a senior salesmanship class — including the 
study of textiles and non-textiles, and covering three 
busy months j the instruction of special groups of sales- 
clerks to be transferred for special sales j "demonstra- 
tion sales," in which teacher and pupil "play store," 
with the teacher impersonating various types of cus- 
tomers j the executive course to prepare employees for 
high executive positions of different rank and order ; 
and the specialized instruction for dictaphone and 
comptometer operators, correspondence and file clerks 
and the like. 

In the limited space of this book, I shall have no 
opportunity to carry you further into the details of this 
fascinating department of the modern store. The 
saleswoman's little black book that we saw but a few 
minutes ago ought to show it more clearly to your eyes 
than any elaborate presentments of schedules and cur- 
riculums. The result's the thing. And Macy's has 
the results. It has already achieved them. Not only 
has it lifted retail selling from the hard and rutty road 
of cold commercialism but it has lifted the individual 
seller, himself — which, to my way of thinking, is to be 
accounted a good deal of a triumph. In such a triumph 
society at large shares — and shares not a little. 

It is house policy — sound policy — to encourage em- 
ployees to look out not only for the store's interest, but 
for their own. An ambitious salesman is indeed an 
asset j and there are ways of keeping him ambitious. 
There is, for instance, the system of bonuses for punc- 
tuality, which takes the final form of extra holidays in 



The Macy Family 227 

the summertime. A week's holiday with pay is given 
without fail to each and every employee of eight 
months' standing. But a record of good attendance 
and punctuality for fifty long weeks brings another 
week of vacation, also with full pay. Department- 
stores not so long ago used to penalize their workers 
for tardiness. The new Macy plan works best, 
however. 

The list of those bonus possibilities is long. There 
is, of course, chief amongst them, the bonus which takes 
the concrete form of a sales commission. The sales- 
clerk is set a moderate quota for his or her week's work. 
On sales that reach above this figure he or she is paid 
a percentage commission. And, lest you may be 
tempted to dismiss this statement with a mere shrug of 
the shoulders, as a perfunctory thing perhaps, permit 
me to tell you that but last year a retail salesman in the 
furniture department earned in excess of $6,000 in 
wages and commissions. 

One other thing before we are done with this main 
chapter on the Macy family and starting up another 
which shall show the super-household at its play; it is 
a thing closely associated both with department-store 
employment and training: this "special squad" which 
has become so distinctive a feature of the big red-brick 
selling enterprise in Herald Square. Concretely, it is 
a group of college graduates — the heads of the firm are 
themselves college men and have none of the contempt 
for education that has become so blatant a thing in the 
minds of so many "self-made business captains" of 
today — who desire to enter upon this fascinating and 



228 The Romance of a Great Store 

comparatively new field of department-store service. 

As one of the executives of the department of train- 
ing himself says, "Many of these young grads come in 
here with the rattle of their brand-new diplomas so 
loud in their ears that for quite a while they can't hear 
anything else." 

Yet they are good material — as a rule, uncommonly 
good material. So Dr. Michael Lucey says, and 
Dr. Lucey knows. As a supplement to his educational 
work in the commercial high schools he entered Macy's 
last summer and spent the two months of his vacation 
in the special squad, studying the store from a variety 
of intimate and personal angles. On his first day in 
it, the distinguished educator sold clothing — men's 
clothing — and he sold to his first customer, an accom- 
plishment which he notes with no little pride. His 
pride at the moment was large. But the next moment 
was destined to take a fall. A floor manager down the 
aisle espied the new clerk. 

"Don't let those trousers sweep the floor," he 
admonished. 

And the educator had his first taste of store discipline. 

Sooner or later all these young men out of college 
get that first taste. It does not harm them. And it is 
not very long before they begin to observe that, after 
all, there are still a few things about which they know 
practically nothing. After which their real education 
begins. 

A department-store is, among other things, a great 
melting pot. An Englishman who came into Macy's 



The Macy Family 229 

special squad last year inquired just what work might 
be expected of him. He was told. 

"Manual labor," he protested, "I can't think of it. 
I wear the silver badge." 

Which meant that he was one of the King's own — a 
pensioner of the late war. The store executive who 
first handled this bit of human raw material possessed 
a deal of real tact; most of them do. He smiled 
gently upon the Britisher. 

"After all," he suggested, "you know you don't have 
to tell your King that you had to use your two good 
hands in hard work." 

The Englishman saw the point. He laughed, shook 
hands and went to work. In six months he was an 
executive, himself. It's a way that they have at 
Macy's. And here is part of the way. 

Manual labor is demanded invariably of those who 
enlist in the special squad. It has a regular system 
through which each of its workers must pass. First 
he is given the history and development of the store 
and of its policies. This work is followed by a week 
on the receiving platform and then a good stiff session 
in the marking-room. The college boy follows the 
merchandise along a little further. He proceeds for 
a while to sell it — then does the work of a section 
manager. After which there come, in logical sequence, 
the delivery department, the bureau of investigation, 
the comptroller's office, the tube system, an intensive 
study of the departments of employment and of train- 
ing. These are not only studied but written reports 
are made upon them. After which he should have a 



230 The Romance of a Great Store 

pretty fair idea of the store and the things for which it 
stands. 

The course is only varied in slight detail for the 
woman college graduate. Macy's has naught but the 
highest regard for the gentler sex — not alone as its 
patrons but as members of its staff — yesterday, today 
and tomorrow. A woman may not be able to handle 
heavy cases upon the receiving platform. But there 
are other sorts of cases that she may handle — and fre- 
quently with a tact and diplomacy not often shown by 
the more oppressed sex. I might cite a hundred 
instances from within the store where she has shown 
both — and initiative as well. But I shall give only 
one — where initiative played the largest part. Some 
few months ago a young woman who has climbed high 
in the store organization, to the important post of buyer 
of a most important line of muslin wearing apparel, 
found herself in France, but a few hours before the 
steamer upon which she was booked to sail to the 
United States was to depart from Southampton. To 
take a steamer across the Channel and then catch her 
boat was quite out of the question. She did the next 
best thing. She hopped on an aeroplane and flew from 
Paris to London; seemingly in almost less time than it 
here takes to tell it. She caught her boat. Her 
instructions were to catch the boat. And long since she 
had acquired the Macy habit of obeying orders. 

Upon this, again, a whole volume might be written — 
upon the thoroughness of an organization which really 
organizes, a training department that really trains, a 
system which really systematizes. And all under the 



The Macy Family 231 

title of a family group — in which affection and tact and 
understanding come into play quite as often as discipline 
and energy and initiative. 



VII. The Family at Play 

IN the business machine of yesterday there were no 
adjustments for play. It prided itself upon its 
efficiency. And in the next breath it proclaimed that 
such efficiency left no room whatsoever for such foolish- 
ness as recreation. Today we know much better. We 
know that play — healthy, uniform play in a decent 
amount — is one of the very finest of tonics for the 
human frame. And so count it as one of the very 
highest factors in our modern schemes of efficiency. 

Macy's plays and makes no secret of the fact. On 
the contrary, it is intensely proud of its provisions for 
the welfare of its workers. Industrial recreation is no 
mere idle phrase to it. In hard fact no small portion 
of the remarkable esprit de corps of the store is due to 
its well organized recreational and social service work. 
In a large measure this part of the operation of the 
store corresponds to what the War and Navy Depart- 
ments did through their Commissions on Training 
Camp Activities during the great war. Bearing in 
mind our likening Macy's to an army in an earlier 
chapter, the parallel now becomes a close one indeed. 
Organized recreation promoted better team work in the 
war j it now promotes better team work in business. 
Ergo, it is for the welfare of Macy's that it shall pro- 
mote organized recreation beneath its own roof. 

233 



234 The Romance of a Great Store 

And yet that very phrase, "welfare work," is not 
often used underneath that roof. It has the flavor of 
patronage which is so wholly lacking in this family of 
thousands, and so it is thrust forever into the discard. 
"The bunch" gets together — you see, you may call the 
family by almost any name that pleases you best- 
various groups are forever assembling at the Men's 
Club or the Community Club and making plans for 
their numerous activities. And these last cover a sur- 
prisingly large range. 

Any male employee of the store may join the Macy 
Men's Club. It is a wholly self-governing body and, 
aside from making up the inevitable deficits that accrue, 
the store has no paternalistic or direct attitude whatso- 
ever toward it. The club itself is situated at 1 56 West 
Thirty-fifth Street, just west of the store, but entirely 
separated from it. It occupies two floors of an ex- 
tremely comfortable building. In its externals it dif- 
fers very little from any other sort of men's club. 
There are a reading room and a smoking room where, 
toward the close of the day and well into the evening, 
its members may relax. And there is a restaurant 
serving extremely good meals. 

It is only as one pokes beneath the surface that he 
begins to find out how very real this small institution, 
that is an offshoot of the larger one, really is. Its 
restaurant serves meals at considerably less than cost. 
And the fact that this club is regarded as something 
more than a mere combination of eating-place and rest- 
room is shown by its organization activities in other 
directions. For example, its members interest them- 



The Family at Play 235 

selves in general athletics to the extent that, in the 
proper seasons, they have very creditable teams of 
baseball, basketball, football and the like, while occa- 
sional outings with suitable field events are arranged. 
Each Thursday evening there is organized athletic 
work in a large private gymnasium that is especially 
hired for the purpose. 

In fact it is at this last point that the Men's Club 
comes in contact with the Community Club, which is 
the nucleus organization covering other recreational 
activities among the women, the girls and the younger 
men of the store family. For, by careful planning, 
both of these clubs manage to use the big gymnasium 
of a single evening, while, after the athletic work is 
over, the floor is cleared and there is dancing until 
going-home time. 

These comforts are not given without some cost to 
the Macy folk. That would be very bad business 
indeed. It has been so decided long since. And so, 
while it may be human nature to be ever on the lookout 
for "something for nothing, 5 ' it is quite as human to 
derive very much additional enjoyment from the things 
for which one pays. Even the suggestion of charity is 
not pleasant. And with this in view these clubs charge 
nominal sums for their privileges. In so doing they 
earn the respect of those who share in them. 

Dues for the Men's Club are placed at three dollars 
a year — that surely is a nominal figure. These go 
toward the development of club activities outside of its 
actual running expenses (rent, the restaurant, etc.). 
The gymnasium fee is another three dollars, which is 



236 The Romance of a Great Store 

much less than one would pay for a similar facility 
elsewhere in New York. 

The scale of charges for the Community Club is 
quite different. The dues here are but twenty-five 
cents a year — its membership is made up mainly of 
lower-salaried folk — with small extra charges for 
special activities. For instance, the Spanish class, which 
is taught by one of the Spanish interpreters in the store 
and which has a constant attendance of about forty, 
costs its pupils the very inconsiderable sum of five cents 
a lesson. The gymnasium charge is kept in a like ratio. 
There are a few others in addition. The aggregate 
cost, however, of as many activities as an average 
employee can take up is of little moment or burden to 
him or to her — nothing as compared with the sense of 
independence that goes with the small act of payment. 

The Choral Club, under the direction of a com- 
petent leader, meets Wednesday evenings in the big 
recreation room on the third floor of the store, with a 
usual attendance of about two hundred men and women 
who are trained in part singing and in chorus work of 
various sorts. This is not only enjoyable and popular 
for its own sake but it has an added value in leading 
toward the organizing of the store's talent for concerts 
and for musical plays. 

And it has such talent. Do not forget that — not 
even for a passing moment. It would be odd, indeed, 
if a family of five thousand folk did not develop upon 
demand much real histrionic and artistic ability of every 
sort. And when such potentialities are fostered and 
encouraged, the results — well, they are such as to warn 



The Family at Play 237 

Florenz Ziegfeld and the rest of the Forty-second 
Street theatrical producers to keep a sharp eye, indeed, 
upon Macy's. 

On Monday evenings, the entire winter long and well 
into the spring, the Dramatic Club meets and here every 
budding Maxine Elliott or Ina Claire has her full 
opportunity. On Tuesday there is a get-together 
evening — one begins to think with all these evenings 
so neatly filled of the calendar of a real social enter- 
prise — and then one sees the store family at its fullest 
relaxation. Here was a recent Tuesday night. It 
was just before Christmas and the store was approach- 
ing the annual peak load of its year's traffic. Yet it 
had no intention whatsoever of relaxing a single one 
of its social endeavors. 

On this particular Tuesday evening our salesgirl — 
the one whom we saw but a moment ago being inducted 
into the selling organism of the store — made her first 
personal acquaintance with the Community Club. Let 
her tell her own story, and in her own way: 

"Up in the recreation room a few hundred of us 
gathered for a regular party. Some few of us had 
gone home after store hours for our dinner; the others 
had had it right in the store's own lunchroom. It 
surely is great the way that you can get a meal there in 
Macy's at any time you are staying late — either on duty 
or on pleasure. 

"At about six-thirty the evening's program got under 
way — so that the many friendly, chattering groups of 
girls in the big room finally had to simmer down to 
something approaching silence. Then the Choral Club 



238 The Romance of a Great Store 

began singing for us — some good, old-time Christmas 
carols first, and then some other songs. All of us 
joined finally in the chorus, leaving the club to carry 
the difficult parts. They could do that all right, too. 
Mr. Janpolski, their leader, finally gave us a solo and 
after that there was a grand march led by our own 
beloved Marjorie Sidney. Everybody joined in — not 
only in body, but in spirit. It was like Washington's 
Birthday in the big gym up at Northampton. Messen- 
ger girls, college graduates, salesfolk, deliverymen, 
managers — everyone was just the same in that blessed 
hour. Distinctions of the store were gone. We were 
boys and girls — some of us a bit grown up and grayed 
to be sure, but all with Peter Pannish hearts — having a 
real party once again. 

"The grand march ended in dancing for every one — 
with a jolly negro at the piano doing his level best to 
uphold the reputation of his race for really spontaneous 
music. Finally, after many encore dances, everybody 
withdrew from the floor and out came Mr. Salek, the 
director of the Men's Club, and Miss Knowles, doing 
an almost professional dance. The Castles had very 
little on this couple — the way Salek lifted his partner 
and then let her down — slowly, slowly, still more 
slowly — reminded me of Maurice and Walton. Their 
performance brought down the house. Of course they 
had to respond to encores; again and again and again. 

"Following this — for Macy's believes that variety is 
the spice of all life — a Junior recited the unf orgetable 
1 'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the 
house.' She really was a darling. And how Christ- 



The Family at Play 239 

massy she looked, with her big butterfly sash and her 
hairbow of scarlet tulle . . . Next on the program 
came dancing — for everybody. First, however, there 
was another march, so that each couple received a 
number — while every little while certain numbers (the 
couples that held them) were eliminated from the 
floor. The nicest part about this elimination dance, as 
they called it, was that instead of only the last couple 
getting the prize, as is generally done — every couple, 
as soon as its number was called and it left the floor, 
went over to a big chimney-top, with a proverbially 
jolly 'Santa' peering out of it. There Santa gave to 
each one a little gift, such as a whistle, a stick of candy, 
or a jolly little rattle. Then, after more dancing, 
refreshments were served by gaily garbed Junior 
waitresses. After which the dancing continued until 
the merry Community Club Christmas dance was 
entirely over." 

Already I have touched upon the annual vacation of 
the Macy worker — one week with pay after eight 
months continuous employment, two weeks after two 
years, three weeks after five years, and a month after 
twenty-five years of service. A charming retreat 
among the hills of Sullivan County, eighty-seven miles 
from New York and, through the foresight of the 
management of the store, purchased long ago, provides 
an ideal vacation spot for the Macy girls who wish to 
spend their holidays among truly rural surroundings. 
For this purpose a large farm house and a hundred 
acres of surrounding land were acquired by Macy's and 



240 The Romance of a Great Store 

more than fifty thousand dollars spent in enlarging the 
house, beautifying the grounds and otherwise making 
them suitable for their summertime uses. In addition 
to the big and immaculately white farm house there are 
three cottages upon the property. As many as sixty- 
five girls can be accommodated at a single time upon it. 
Three jumps or so from the main house and 
stretched out in front of it is a lake; a regular lake, if 
you please, big enough for boating and for bathing, 
although not so large that one of the keen-eyed 
chaperones may keep her weather eye on those of her 
charges whose tastes run toward water sports. In this 
Adamless Eden bloomers and middy blouses are de 
rigueur> and as the few restraints imposed are only 
those inspired by ordinary good sense, the girls experi- 
ence the real joys of living. 

All of these activities and interests — and many, many 
more besides — are faithfully chronicled in the Macy 
house organ, Sparks. Here is a monthly magazine — 
of some sixteen pages, each measuring seven by ten 
inches — that in appearance alone would grace any 
newsstand, while its contents almost invariably bear out 
the attractiveness of its cover designs. Practically the 
entire publication is prepared by its staff, which, in 
turn, is composed of members of the Macy family. 

House organs, such as this, are, of course, no novelty 
in the American business world of today. There 
probably are not less than fifty department-stores alone 
which are now printing brisk contemporaries of Sparks. 
The internal publications of a house, such as Macy's, 



The Family at Play 241 

have long since come to be recognized as one of its most 
valuable media for the promotion of morale. It costs 
money, but it is money well expended. So says modern 
business. And modern business ought to know. For 
it has tested the results. And the house organ long 
since became one of the really valuable aides. 

Here, then, in Sparks is not only a medium in which 
the Macy folks may come the better to know about one 
another, a bulletin board upon which the heads of the 
house may from time to time carry very direct and 
sincere messages to their big family, but a mouthpiece 
in which the embryo literary genius may become 
articulate. And, lest you be tempted to believe that I 
have permitted simile to carry me quite away from fact, 
let me show you a single instance — there are a number 
of others beside — in which a real literary genius has 
come to bloom underneath the great roof that looks 
down upon Herald Square: 

His pen name is Francis Carlin — but his real name, 
the one under which he entered Macy's, is James 
Francis Carlin MacDonnell. Of him Current Opinion 
but a year or two ago said: "The writer (Carlin) 
. . . was until a few weeks ago a floorwalker in one of 
the big department-stores of New York City (Macy's) 
and was discovered by Padraic Colum. He had his 
book obscurely printed and it has been unobtainable at 
bookstores until recently. ... It has the true Celtic 
quality. The dedication alone is worth the price of 
admission: 'It is here that the book begins and it is here 
that a prayer is asked for the soul of the scribe who 
wrote it for the glory of God, the honor of Erin and 



242 The Romance of a Great Store 

the pleasure of the woman who came from both — his 
mother/ " 

Mr, MacDonnell has written two books: this first, 
My Ireland, and more recently the Cairn of Stones. 
That he has great talent is again attested by The Boston 
Transcript which said recently: "Mr. Carlin's Celtic 
poems, ballads and lyrics are nearer the fine perfection 
of the native poets belonging to the Celtic renaissance 
than those produced by any poet of Irish blood born 
in America." 

After which, who may now dare say that genius may 
not blossom in a department-store? And even were it 
not for the gaining glory of Carlin, the pages of any 
current issue of Sparks would show that there is 
more than a deal of artistic merit in the widespread 
ranks of the Macy family. The desire for self- 
expression is never stunted. And the pages of its 
avenue of expression are read by none more closely 
than the members of the family who hold the owner- 
ship of Macy's. 

And yet these men — the heads of the great mer- 
chandising house — are not only accessible to their busi- 
ness family through the printed word. They are not 
standoffish. On the contrary, they are most widely 
known throughout the store j most reachable, both 
within their offices and without. Take the single 
matter of grievances, for a most important instance: 
A Macy worker may feel that justice on some point or 
other is being denied him by a superior. In such a case 
he has immediate recourse to any one of three ex- 






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The Family at Play 243 

pedients: he may take his case to the department of 
training, to the general manager of the store, or to one 
of the officers of the corporation. As a rule, however, 
the difficulty can be straightened out in the first of these 
avenues of appeal, which is an automatic clearing-house 
for all matters of personnel. The heads of this depart- 
ment have been chosen as much as anything for the 
sympathy which enables them to review any employee's 
case intelligently and fairly and for the influence that 
makes it possible for them to see at all times that full 
justice is being done. While the fact that the worker, 
himself, may take the matter to the general manager or 
even to one of the three members of the firm, is a 
practical guarantee against persecution of any sort. 

Just off the corner of the recreation room on the 
third floor is the private office of the assistant superin- 
tendent of training. Her title sounds rather formid- 
able and does justice neither to her job nor to her 
personality: for in reality she combines the qualities of 
a charming hostess, an efficient manager and a mother 
confessor. 

In the Macy book of information for employees 
there is a paragraph under the heading, "Department 
of Training," which says: "It is the purpose of this 
department to interest itself in all the employees of 
this organization. Do not hesitate to go with your 
troubles to the assistant superintendent of training, 
whose duty it is to interest herself in you: both in the 
store and at your home. She will be glad to give you 
advice, both in business and in personal matters." 

And so she has her hands full, and sometimes her 



244 The Romance of a Great Store 

heart as wellj for, among five thousand folk of every 
sort and kind, there are bound to be many perplexing 
personal problems and troubles, to which the very best 
kind of help is the kindly and disinterested advice of a 
sympathetic and understanding person. And when that 
person is a woman — a woman of rare tact — the problem 
is generally apt to approach its solution. Which makes 
for friendship, not merely between the worker and that 
woman, but between the worker and the store. And 
so still another rivet is clinched in the great morale 
bridge between the business machine and the human 
units that enable it to function so very well indeed. 
And the Macy spirit becomes an even more tangible 
thing. 

As one goes through the store he finds many evi- 
dences of the things that go to upbuild that spirit. It 
may be only a printed sign cautioning courtesy and 
cheerfulness, not merely between the store workers and 
its patrons, but between the members of the Macy 
family, themselves. "A smile with every package and 
a 'thank you' as good-bye," rings one. And remember 
that other, again more cautious: "In speaking say c we' 
and 'our,' not C V and 'mine.' " It may be the warm 
hand of friendship from the member of the reception 
committee to the new girl that comes to work under 
the Herald Square roof, or it may be any of the long- 
planned, coolly devised methods of social justice to the 
store employee. These last are never to be overlooked. 

For instance, three months after the day that a new 
employee first arrives to work at Macy's, membership 



The Family at Play 245 

in the Macy Mutual Aid Association becomes automatic. 
In no small way it becomes a real part of his job. 
It is the object of the M. M. A. A. to provide and 
maintain a fund for the assistance of its members dur- 
ing sickness and of their families or dependents in case 
of death. Dues in this association are graded accord- 
ing to the worker's salary, consist of one per cent, of 
the salary up to thirty dollars j while the sick benefits 
are two-thirds of the salary, limited by a benefit of 
twenty dollars. The death benefits are five times the 
weekly salary, with a minimum of sixty dollars and a 
maximum of one hundred and fifty dollars. 

It is obvious that these dues do not of themselves 
pay the benefits. The house "chips in." Yet not 
through sympathy, but through one of the tenets of 
good business as we moderns have now begun to 
know it. 

"It would be poor business for me, indeed," said a 
silk manufacturer of Connecticut to me not long ago, 
"to let my people become sick. I want no germ 
diseases in my mills. Neither do I want the mills to 
cease their continuous operation. That, too, is poor 
business. And so the sickness that may cost my worker 
ttn dollars may easily cost me twenty-five — in the stop- 
page of my plant, alone." 

The control of the Macy Mutual Aid Association is, 
moreover, vested solely in the hands of the store 
employees. An itemized statement of its receipts and 
its disbursements as well as its proceedings is posted each 
month on the store bulletin boards and printed in 
Sparks, so that every member of the organization may 



246 The Romance of a Great Store 

know its exact affairs. It decidedly does not work in 
the dark. 

I should be derelict, indeed, in regard to this whole 
question of health in modern industry — and of the 
particular modern industry of which this book treats — 
if I neglected in these pages that corner of the high-set 
eighth floor — flooded by sunshine during the greater 
part of each pleasant day — where sits the Macy hos- 
pital, conducted by the Macy Mutual Aid Association. 
It is, of course, solely an emergency hospital, yet one 
where doctors, nurses, dentists and a chiropodist are 
constantly on duty. Three doctors — two men and one 
woman — consult with and prescribe for the patients, two 
dentists look after their teeth, and a chiropodist takes 
care of that prime asset to all salespeople — the feet. 
Those members of the hospital staff are professional 
men and women of the first rank and they work with 
the best and latest equipment. Although the 
emergency hospital is primarily for the services of the 
store workers it stands also at the service of any one 
who may come into the building and need its services. 
For instance, in case a customer becomes ill, a wheel- 
chair is sent, and he or she, as the case may be, is taken 
to the hospital for immediate restorative treatment. 

One or two final phases of this family life upon a 
huge scale in the very heart of New York and I am 
done with it. Thrift, in the Macy category of the 
making of a good worker, comes only next to good 
health. Under that same widespread roof there is a 



The Family at Play 247 

savings bank for the sole use of Macy folk. Any 
amount from five cents upward is accepted as a deposit 
and the fact that good use is made of this constant 
incentive to thrift is evidenced by the continued and 
prosperous operation of the institution. It has not 
been necessary to organize it as a full-fledged savings 
bank. At the end of each day it transfers its funds, by 
means of a special messenger, to one of the largest of 
New York savings banks which handles the accounts 
directly. The law does not permit a savings bank in 
the State of New York to open branches — else that 
would have been done at Macy's long ago. The 
messenger method was the only feasible substitute. 

Believing that even the most provident may occa- 
sionally have good reasons, indeed, for wishing to 
borrow money, the heads of the house have set aside a 
permanent fund as a loan reserve for the Macy folk. 
Any one who has been in the store's employ for at least 
three months may, upon advancing even ordinarily 
satisfactory reasons, borrow from this fund. The limit 
is a sum which can be repaid in ten weekly installments. 
No security is required nor is any interest charged. 
The employee is bound by nothing but his honor. 

That sixty-four years of continuous operation have 
established the commercial success of Macy's should be 
patent to you by this time. But now that you have 
known of the present-day family that dwells beneath 
its roof, you may ask: Has this policy toward its 
personnel worked out in hard practice? The question 
is indeed a fair one. To carry it still further, is this 



248 The Romance of a Great Store 

machine of modern business humanized and inspired in 
fact as well as in theory? One cannot help but think 
of the machine. Machines are hard. Generally they 
are fabricated in that hardest of all metals — steel. Can 
steel be warmed and tempered? Can the fact be 
recognized that the units of the Macy store are human 
and warmj and not steel and cold? 

I think so. I imagine that you would have the 
answer to all these questions if you could talk for a 
little time with Jimmie Woods, whom we saw, but a 
short time hence, as a push-cart horse for the early 
Macy's and who has come today to be the assistant 
superintendent of the store's delivery department. His 
new job requires much more push than that old-time 
one. As a caption-line in a recent issue of Sparks aptly 
said: "Jimmie Woods delivers the goods." Meta- 
phorically speaking, the house of Macy does the same 
thing. And at no point more than in its treatment of 
its human factors. 

The day was not so very long ago when the life of 
a salesperson, even in a New York store of the better 
class, was not a particularly enviable thing. We saw, 
when we discussed the earlier Macy's, the long hours 
and the low wages of the rank and file of the organi- 
zation. These things have changed today — in all 
department-stores that are worthy of the name. Public 
opinion was partly responsible for the change. But 
I think quite as large a factor was the realization that 
gradually was forced upon the minds of the merchants 
themselves that the old methods were poor business 
methods. Macy's knows that today. We have seen 



The Family at Play 249 

the man who came to New York fifteen years ago with 
eleven dollars and a suitcase come to a high-salaried 
position with the house today 5 the retail furniture 
salesman earning over six thousand dollars a year, the 
twenty-five buyers at ten thousand a year and upward, 
as well as those at twenty-five thousand a year and 
upward. And we know that every one of these men 
and women have been the product of the Macy organi- 
zation — from the moment that they began at the very 
bottom of the ladder, 

And, lest you still think I befog the question, permit 
me to add that the minimum weekly wage of the woman 
employee in Macy's today is $ 14.00 j and the average 
pay — apart from that of the executives and sub- 
executives — the men and women who, in the store's own 
nomenclature, are classed as "specials" and exempted 
from the time-disc record of their comings and their 
goings — is $25.00. 

Have I now answered your question fairly? If still 
you wobble and are uncertain, permit me to call your 
attention to the service records of the store. They 
speak more eloquently than aught else can of the 
loyalty and the interest of its workers. Qualities such 
as these are not generated under bad working practices 
of any sort. 

The records tell — and tell accurately, as well as 
eloquently. A Macy man was recently retired on a 
pension — the store's list of pensioners runs to a con- 
siderable length — after a round half-century of service. 
Others will soon follow in his footsteps. There are 
today upon the rolls ninety-two men and women who 



250 The Romance of a Great Store 

have been with it for more than twenty-five years. In 
the delivery department alone there are twenty-three 
men who have records of twenty years or more; and of 
these there are three who have been there more than 
forty years. Three hundred members of the Macy 
family have records of fifteen years or over, fifteen 
hundred have been with it upwards of five years and — 
despite the recent af ter-the-war difficulties of maintain- 
ing labor morale and organization — only about one- 
quarter of the force have come within the twelvemonth. 
The labor turnover in Macy's is low indeed — and con- 
stantly is growing lower. 

These figures, it seems to me, are the surest indication 
that the store's workers are treated fairly. Moreover, 
they alone show clearly the workings of its announced 
policy to give its own people every possible opportunity 
to grow within its ranks. In fact, no man or woman 
can stand still long at Macy's and continue to hold his 
or her job. Progress is a very necessary requisite 
there. And in order that progress may be recognized, 
steadily and fairly, system comes in once again to 
stabilize a very natural phase of human development. 
As the Macy employee shows new capabilities or addi- 
tional industry, recommendations for increases in his 
remuneration are made by his department manager to 
a salary committee, appointed for this sole purpose. 
Periodically this committee receives a list of all the 
store folk who have not received an increase for a 
period of six months. The list is carefully reviewed 
and, whenever and wherever it can be justified, the pay 
envelope of the employee is fattened. 



The Family at Play 25 1 

Macy's is, after all, a very human institution. The 
machine may be steel-like, but it is not steel. It is 
flesh and blood and human understanding. I some- 
times think of it as a country town, rather than as a 
family — one of those nice, old-fashioned sorts of 
country towns, where most of the residents know one 
another, where there is an efficient governing body and 
where the community spirit is one of the strongest 
factors in its progress. Being human it is fallible, 
being fallible it still has something for which to work} 
and in fulfilling this obligation of work it is carrying 
out its destiny. 



Tomorrow 



I. In Which Macy's Prepares to 
Build Anew 

YESTERDAY, when Milady of Manhattan went 
for her shopping along the tree-lined reaches of 
Fourteenth Street, and found her way into that 
perennially fascinating shop at the corner of Sixth 
Avenue which specialized in its ribbons and its gloves 
and its rare exotic imported perfumes, she dreamed but 
little, if indeed she dreamed at all, of a Macy's that 
some day should stand intrenched at Herald Square 
and embrace a whole block-front of Broadway. Today 
Milady, finding her way into that small triangular 
"Square" in the very heart of Manhattan — still on the 
sharp lookout for ribbons and gloves and rare exotic 
perfumes — and Heaven only knows what else beside — 
may little dream of the changes that a tomorrow — 

Tomorrow — what business has a book such as this to 
be talking of tomorrow 5 a vague, fantastic thing that 
only fools may seek to interpret in advance? 

We have seen between these covers quite a number 
of things — some of them passing odd things — yet 
classified among the factors of good business, according 
to all of its modern definitions. And to them we shall 
now add another — the understanding and the correct 
interpretation of tomorrow. I think that when I 
depicted Mr. Macy standing with his daughter, 

255 



256 The Romance of a Great Store 

Florence, at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street and 
Broadway half a century ago and explaining how there 
would be the business center of New York fifty years 
hence, I called attention to the sharp commercial fact 
that a great machine of modern business goes ahead 
quite as much upon the vision and the foresight of the 
men that guide it as upon their prudence. Which 
means in still another way, the proper understanding 
of tomorrows. And that understanding today is quite 
as much an asset of Macy's as its real estate, its cash 
balances in the banks, or the millions of dollars stand- 
ing in the stock upon its shelves. 

More than a decade ago the big store in Herald 
Square first began to feel its own growing pains. The 
fact that ten years before that it had been planned as the 
largest single department-store building in the United 
States, if not in the entire world, availed nothing when 
business came in even greater measure than the most 
far-sighted of its planners had dared to dream. 
Within three or four years after the time that the 
caravans of trucks and drays had moved Macy's the 
mile uptown from the old store to the new, changes 
were under way in the new building, changes seeking 
to make an economy of space here, another economy 
there — everywhere that an odd corner could be utilized 
to the better advantage of the store and its patrons, it 
was at once so used. Finally it became necessary to 
abandon the exhibition hall that was originally located 
on the ninth floor and thrust that great space into one 
of the larger non-selling departments of the enter- 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 257 

prise j and two or three years later an entire extra floor 
was added atop of the big building — adding a goodly 
ten per cent, to its million square feet of floor space 
already existing. 

Yet even these changes could not solve the final 
problem. Macy's still refused to stay put. Its growth 
was relentless, unending. Each fresh provision made 
for its expansion was quickly swallowed up, with the 
result that the proprietors of the store finally faced the 
inevitable: the need of making a real addition to their 
plant, not a series of picayune little extensions, but one 
fine, sweeping move which should be as distinct a step 
forward in Macy progress as the mighty hegira that 
occurred when the store moved north from Fourteenth 
Street to Thirty-fourth — a little more than eighteen 
years ago. 

And, facing the inevitable, Macy's quickly made up 
its mind. It never has been noted for any particular 
hesitancy. It decided to step ahead. 

Forecasting tomorrow in New York is not, after all, 
so vast a task as it might seem to be at a careless first 
glance. That is, if you do not put your tomorrow too 
far ahead — say more than ten or a dozen years at the 
most. I am perfectly willing to sit in these beginning 
days of 1922 and to assert that to attempt to forecast 
1952 or even 1942 is not a particularly alluring 
pastime — if one has any real desire for accuracy. But 
1932 is not so difficult. It is the business of skilled 
experts to interpret 1932 in 1922; a business which 
incidentally is rendered vastly easier in New York today 



258 The Romance of a Great Store 

than it was ten years ago by two hard and settled 
facts — the one, the wonderfully efficient new zoning 
plan of the city, and the other, the construction of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Station on Seventh and Eighth 
Avenues, from Thirty-first to Thirty-third Streets. 

The first of these factors should hold the strictly 
commercial development of the city — save for local 
outlying hubs or centers — south of Fifty-ninth Street. 
The block-a-year uptown movement of Manhattan for 
whole decades past has finally been halted} and halted 
effectually. Central Park has of course proved no 
little barrier in fixing Fifty-ninth Street as the arbitrary 
point of stoppage. But the zoning law, protecting the 
fine residence streets north of that point, and the 
Pennsylvania Station are also factors not to be 
overlooked. 

True it is that at the very moment that these para- 
graphs are being written whole groups of new business 
buildings are being opened, in Fifty-seventh, Fifty- 
eighth and Fifty-ninth Streets, in the center of Man- 
hattan. But other and bigger buildings are going up 
in the cross-streets far to the south of these. Count 
that much for the Pennsylvania Station. For it, and it 
alone, has proved the salvation of Thirty-fourth Street. 
Macy's, Altman's, McCreery's, the Waldorf-Astoria, 
the Hotel McAlpin — none of these alone nor all of 
them together — might have been able to save Thirty- 
fourth Street from becoming another Fourteenth, or 
another Twenty-third — a dull, wide thoroughfare 
given almost entirely in its later days to wholesale 
trade of one sort or another. 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 259 

The Pennsylvania Station could do, and did do, the 
trick. Opened in 19 10 — but eight years after Macy's 
came first to Thirty-fourth Street and that brisk 
thoroughfare of today was in the very youth of its 
prosperity — the traffic which it handled day by day and 
month by month at that time was more than doubled 
in 1920. Not only has the business of the parent road 
that occupies it practically doubled in that decade, but 
the inclusion of the important through trains of the 
Baltimore & Ohio and the Lehigh Valley Railroads, to 
say nothing of the traffic of the huge suburban Long 
Island system increasing by leaps and bounds each 
twelvemonth, has begun at last to tax the facilities of a 
structure seemingly far too big ever to be severely 
taxed. In recent months the cementing of a closer 
traffic alliance between the New Haven and the Penn- 
sylvania systems renders it a foregone conclusion that 
more and more of the through trains from New 
England will be brought to the big white-pillared 
station in Seventh Avenue. 

You cannot down a street on which there stands a 
city gateway, particularly if the city gateway be one 
through which there sweeps all the way from fifty to 
sixty thousand folk a day. Thirty-fourth Street can- 
not be downed. Remember that, if you will. It will 
not be compelled to share the rather bitter fate of its 
former wide-set compeers just to the south. This 
much is known today. 

And being known, it settles forever even the possi- 
bility of Macy's moving uptown once again. It, too, is 
fixed. It has cast its die with the street called Thirty- 



260 The Romance of a Great Store 

fourth and with Thirty-fourth it is going to remain. 
So Macy's buys the realty to the west of its present 
building and prepares thereon to erect, in connection 
with its present edifice, a great new store building — in 
ground space one hundred and twenty-five by two 
hundred feet — in height, nineteen full floors above the 
street (and two basements beneath) — in all, some 
500,000 square feet of floor-space or close to fifty per 
cent, added to the 1,100,000 square feet of the present 
store. 

Offhand, it would seem to be a comparatively easy 
matter for the proprietors of a store, such as Macy's, 
to go to their architect and say to him: 

"Here is a fine plot, one hundred and twenty-five 
feet by two hundred. We want you to design and 
build for us upon it a modern retail building — high 
enough to provide all necessary facilities and scientific 
enough to bring it not merely abreast of other stores 
across the land, but a good long jump ahead of them." 

After which the architect would call for his young 
men and their draughting-boards and proceed, upon 
white paper, to erect his department-store. 

But his problem in this case is not white paper — at 
least white paper undefiled. The real problem is a 
perfectly good store building at the east end of the 
Macy plot — a building far too good and far too modern 
to be "scrapped" — in any recognized sense of the word. 
It was built to last all the way from half a century to a 
full century and its owners have not the slightest inten- 
tion of pulling it down. It must remain the chief 
front of the enlarged Macy store. Tbe caryatides 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 261 

upon either side of its main doors, the red star that 
surmounts them, must continue to look down into busy 
Broadway, as they have been looking for nearly two 
decades past. 

It happens, too, that the store itself was never de- 
signed for extensions toward the west. In the concep- 
tion of its original architect there was a distinct section 
set out at the west end of the present building for 
purely service and non-selling purposes. These in- 
cluded, upon the ground-floor, the great tunnel and 
merchandise unloading docks for incoming trucks, 
similar ones for the outgoing merchandise, freight 
elevators a-plenty ; and in between them and through 
them a truly vast variety of working provision, shops, 
offices, school and comfort rooms, and the like. A 
good feature, this section — which occupies almost the 
exact site of the former Koster & Bial Theater — but 
tremendously in the way when one comes to consider 
the extension of the store toward the west. 

A final factor of this particular reconstruction 
problem — and perhaps the greatest of all — lies in the 
fact that it must be carried forward while the store is 
doing its regular business. Even when the peak load 
of its traffic is reached — those fearfully hard weeks that 
immediately precede the Christmas holiday — the work- 
aday routine of Macy's must not be seriously disturbed. 
Which complicates vastly the architect's problem. 
It is one thing to design and to erect a store building 
whose tenant does not approach the structure with his 
wares for sale until the merchant has given his final 
release, and another — infinitely harder — thing to build, 



262 The Romance of a Great Store 

and build efficiently, as business goes forward all the 
while. The machine as it grinds must be rebuilded. 
And all the while it must lose none of its efficiency. 

Yet, when all is said and done, an architect's life is 
made up of a number of things of this sort. And the 
associated architects of the new Macy store — Messrs. 
Robert D. Kohn and William S. Holden — have not 
permitted the overwhelming problem of its reconstruc- 
tion to fill them with anything even remotely approach- 
ing a state of panic. For that is not an architect's way. 

They have, from the beginning, come toward the big 
problem quietly, sanely and efficiently. At the very 
beginning and in company with two of the officers of the 
corporation they went upon an extended trip through 
the more modern department-stores across the land. 
Here, there, everywhere, they found features worth 
noting and collating. When they were done with their 
journeys they had, as a foundation for their studies 
upon the new Macy store, a sort of standardized prac- 
tice of most of its fellows across the land. 

This preliminary completed, the engineering mem- 
ber of the partnership, Mr. Holden, began an intensive 
study of the fundamental factors of the business 
machine that he was to enlarge. To begin with there 
was its traffic — divided, as we have seen in earlier chap- 
ters, into three great and fairly distinct avenues: the 
merchandise, the shoppers who come to purchase it, and 
the employees who wait upon their needs. 

It is fairly essential that these three streams of traffic 
be kept separate, save at such points where, for the 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 263 

conduct of the business, they must be brought together. 

Here, then, was a real opportunity for study. Mr. 
Holden began with the traffic streams of the shoppers. 

Obviously, and despite the growing importance and 
activity of the Pennsylvania Station, to say nothing of 
the west side subway, which runs down Seventh Avenue 
in front of it, the main traffic streams of shoppers must 
continue to come into Macy's from Broadway. The 
6tar of Broadway is even more firmly set in the heavens 
of New York than that of Thirty-fourth Street. 

These main traffic streams within the store are, then, 
roughly speaking, three in number j one comes from the 
northeast corner — at Thirty-fifth Street — another from 
the southeast corner at Thirty-fourth Street — the third 
still shows a decided fondness for the impressive center 
doors upon Broadway. Within the store they unite 
and then separate into a variety of smaller currents. A 
goodly portion of these violate all the similes of streams 
and proceed upstairs at the rate of about 10,300 folk 
an hour at the busiest times of busy days. And there 
are an astonishingly large number of these times. Of 
these 10,300, about 7,400 will ascend upon the great 
escalator, which reaches up into the sixth, or last selling 
floor, of the present store. 

When this escalator was first built, eighteen years 
ago, it was looked upon as hardly less than a transporta- 
tion marvel. Every similar device that had preceded 
it was known as a single-file moving-stairway, with the 
capacity estimated at sixty persons a minute, or 3,600 an 
hour. By making its escalator double-file, Macy's not 
only slightly more than doubled its capacity but 



264 The Romance of a Great Store 

rendered it the full equivalent of at least twenty-five 
passenger elevators of the largest size. 

The man whose business it is to have a sort of first- 
hand acquaintance with 1932 said that by that year 
Macy's would need to take close to twenty thousand 
folk an hour to its upper floors. He was not only 
estimating upon the growth of New York, but upon 
the growth of the store itself. 

"You will have to add another of the double 
escalators," said he, "that will bring your lifting 
capacity upon the two moving stairways up to almost 
fifteen thousand persons an hour." 

An elevator of modern size and speed in a depart- 
ment-store with seven or eight selling floors ought to 
lift two hundred and forty persons an hour. This, as 
you can quickly find out for yourself, means that there 
will be needed for the new store but twenty passenger 
elevators to make good that deficit between increased 
escalator capacity and the total number of folk to be 
carried upstairs. And this, in itself, is a most moderate 
increase. The store already has fourteen modern pas- 
senger elevators. Credit this much, if you will, to the 
escalator. 

So it goes, then, that the new Macy's will have a 
second double-file escalator on the opposite side of the 
main aisle, which is the store's own Broadway, and in 
the same relative relation to it. It will run as far as 
the fourth floor which in the new scheme of Macy 
things is to be devoted to the important business of 
toy selling. 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 265 

What goes up must come down. Shoppers are no 
exception to this old rule. If you still think that they 
are, stand late some busy afternoon at the main stair 
of Macy's and watch them descend. They frequently- 
come at the rate of one hundred to the minute. And 
yet this is but a single stair! 

It is neither practical nor modern greatly to increase 
stairway capacity in remodeling Macy's and so the 
question of a descending escalator thrusts itself upon 
the architects' attention. Despite a certain old- 
fashioned prejudice against it on the part of some 
old-fashioned New Yorkers, a descending escalator is 
not only practicable but entirely safe. Otherwise 
Macy's would not even consider its installation. The 
store planning experts went out to Chicago a few 
months ago, however, and into a great retail estab- 
lishment there which boasts twelve selling floors. 
Escalators were its one salvation — -descending, as well 
as ascending. The Macy party saw old ladies, women 
with children in their arms — everyone who walked, 
save only those walking upon crutches, using this quick 
and constant method of descent. They found the same 
devices in Boston — in subway stations as well as depart- 
ment-stores — and being used with equal facility. 
Straightway they decided that the New York shopper 
was neither more timid nor more reluctant to use a new 
idea than was her Boston or her Chicago sister. A 
descending escalator was placed in the plans for the new 
Macy's — for the use of the store's patrons. 

Still another ascending and descending escalator; 
this time for the store's own family. Remember that 



266 The Romance of a Great Store 

here is a second stream, whose prompt and efficient 
handling is quite as important as that of the shoppers. 
The broad stair in Thirty-fourth Street at which the 
majority of the family arrives, between eight-thirty 
and eight-forty-five of the business morning, is fre- 
quently choked with the rush of incoming employees. 
It will never be choked once the new Macy's is done. 
For then the workers will be handled in great volume 
upon a double escalator, not merely double-file, but 
double in the sense that ascent and descent are handled 
simultaneously and in compact space, very much as the 
double stairways that are installed in modern school- 
houses and industrial plants. 

In the enlarged building the locker rooms and the 
other facilities of the arrival of the store's employees 
will be placed upon the second floor and the first and 
second mezzanines} retained from the present plan, but 
very greatly enlarged. The Macy worker comes to 
them by means of the escalator, quickly and easily, and 
in a similar fashion ascends or descends to his or her 
department. It sounds simple and easy but it is not 
quite so easy when one comes to plan for a maximum 
of 8,800 employees — in 1932. 

A third traffic stream remains for our consideration — 
and the architect's. In many respects it is the most 
difficult. Human beings, to a large extent at least, can 
move themselves. Goods cannot. Yet obviously the 
great stream of merchandise into the building and then 
out again must never be permitted to clog its arteries — 
not for a day, nor even for an hour. This means that 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 267 

there must be not only plenty of channels and conduits 
for it, but ample reservoir space as well. Which, being 
translated, means of course generous warehousing 
rooms, of one sort or another. 

Perhaps it would be well before we come to the 
ingenious plans for making this inanimate stream most 
animate indeed, to consider the general plan of Macy's 
as it will be after its structural renaissance. The 
exterior of the present great building will remain prac- 
tically unchanged. Just back of it and to the west of 
it on the new plot, one hundred and twenty-five feet in 
depth in both Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets, 
and extending the full two hundred feet between them, 
will be erected a new steel and concrete building, har- 
monizing in its f agade and of the most modern type of 
construction j as we have already seen, nineteen stories 
in height with two sub-basements in addition. The 
first ten stories of this structure, at the exact floor levels 
of the old, will be thrown into the existing building and 
the lower seven of them used for selling purposes. 
The uppermost three stories of the combined build- 
ing — covering the entire Macy site — will be used, as 
we shall see in a moment or two, for the reception and 
the warehousing of the merchandise, and other non- 
selling activities of the store. 

The nine stories of the new addition which will rise 
tower-like above the parent building are destined to be 
used entirely for non-selling functions. Thus from 
the architects' plans we see the executive and financial 
offices, including that of advertising upon the thir- 
teenth and the fifteenth floors of this super-cupola j 



268 The Romance of a Great Store 

and the store's own great laundry upon the high 
nineteenth. The department of training and the 
bureau of planning, with an assembly room, will share 
the sixteenth. The more purely recreational features, 
however, the Men's Club and the Community Club and 
the lounging rooms and library, are placed as low as 
the accessible eighth floor. The general manager's 
and employment offices will be as low as the second 
mezzanine — for obvious reasons of convenience. 

None of these departments will be hampered for a 
long time to come, as they have been hampered for a 
number of years past, by a fearful lack of elbow room. 
The new plans have provided for abundant facilities 
of this and every other sort. The employees' cafe- 
terias also are to go into the new section — also upon the 
eighth, or public restaurant floor. They will be greatly 
enlarged over their present capacity. 

These non-selling facilities are given their own 
elevator service from the street} a separate and distinct 
entrance there. The purpose of this last quickly 
becomes evident. There are many occasions — nights 
and Sundays even— when some or all of the recreation 
facilities are in use far beyond the regular store hours. 
Access to them, entirely free and separate from the 
store itself, is an enormous working convenience, and 
the new Macy's has been planned to be filled with 
working conveniences. 

The elevator as well as the escalator will play a vastly 
important part in the fabrication of the new Macy's. 
The one has by no means been overshadowed by the 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 269 

growing importance of the other. There are to be in 
all fifty-six elevators, of one type or another, in the 
reconstructed building. Of all these none is more 
interesting than the ingenious lifts by which whole 
motor trucks, laden as well as empty, are carried into 
the structure, up eleven floors to the merchandising 
reception rooms and down into the basement and sub- 
basement for filling for the city delivery. 

Now are we back again to the handling of that mer- 
chandise stream which we first began to consider but a 
moment ago. At the beginning we can make assertion 
that in the entire history of retail selling no more 
ingenious scheme has been devised for the orderly and 
rapid movement of goods in and out of a department- 
store. 

This flow is kept normal and downward by the simple 
process of first taking the loaded incoming trucks up to 
the eleventh floor of the building for unloading. In 
the present store — as well as in a good many other 
stores — a great amount of immensely valuable ground 
floor space is given over to the various functions of 
receiving and distributing merchandise. We have seen 
long ago how a modern store values this ground floor 
space. For instance, in relation to the value of, let us 
say, the third floor, it is about as ten to one. 

Neither does Macy's propose to clutter the sidewalk 
frontage of even the least important of its frontage 
streets — Thirty-fifth Street — by long lines of motor 
trucks or drays, receiving or discharging goods. In 
fact this sort of thing has become practically impossible 
in the really important cities of the America of today. 



270 The Romance of a Great Store 

If municipal ordinance permits it, public sentiment 
rarely does. And the keen merchant of today — to say 
nothing of tomorrow — never ignores public sentiment. 

So, to the eleventh floor the motor trucks must go — 
on two huge high-speed freight elevators which open 
directly into Thirty-fifth Street. Our horseless age 
makes this possible. The modern architect, planning 
for the congested heart of the island of Manhattan, can 
indeed and reverently thank God for the coming of the 
gasoline engine and the electric storage battery — to say 
nothing of the engineers who helped to make them 
possible. 

Upon that eleventh floor there will extend, for the 
full width of the building, a giant quay, or high-level 
platform, with its stout floor at the exact level of the 
floors of the standardized motor trucks of Macy's (the 
comparatively small proportion of "foreign" or outside 
vehicles that bring merchandise to the store are to be 
unloaded at the Thirty-fifth Street doorways and not 
admitted within the building). The unloading under 
the present well-developed system is a short matter j the 
trucks may quickly be despatched back to the street once 
again j while the refuse and debris of the packers goes 
to appropriate bins behind them. 

Through chutes and sliding-ways the merchandise 
descends a single floor to the great tenth story — extend- 
ing through both the present building and the new one 
to come. Here it will be quickly classified and placed 
upon a conveyor which moves at the level of and 
between the two sides of a double table some five or 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 271 

six hundred feet in length which will extend the greater 
part of the length of the enlarged store. From this 
center table — the backbone of the whole scheme of this 
particular distribution — will extend in parallel aisles at 
right angles to it, whole hundreds of bins and shelves 
and compartments. The entire arrangement will 
resemble nothing so much as a huge double gridiron, 
with many tiny interstices. 

Now do you begin to see the operation of this 
scheme? If not, let me endeavor to make it more clear 
to you. This miniature and silent city, whose straight 
and regular streets are lined in turn with miniature 
apartment houses of merchandise, is zoned — into six 
great zones. Every selling department of the store — 
1 1 8 in the present one — is assigned to one or the other 
of these zones. There it keeps its reserve stock. It 
is, in truth, a reservoir. 

Now, see the plan function! The men's shoe 
department is out of a certain small part of its highly 
diversified stock. It sends a requisition up to its repre- 
sentative upon the tenth floor. It is a matter of 
minutes — almost of seconds — to locate the necessary 
cartons in the simplified and scientifically arranged 
compartments and shelves j a matter certainly of 
mere seconds to despatch them down to the selling 
department. 

For this, the second thrust of the goods-stream 
through the new Macy's, especial provisions have been 
made by the installation of six so-called utility units. 
Three of these are placed at equal intervals along the 
Thirty-fourth Street wall of the enlarged building j 



272 The Romance of a Great Store 

the other three at equal intervals upon its Thirty-fifth 
Street edge. Each unit consists of one elevator (large 
enough to hold two of the rolling-carts, standardized 
for the floor movement of merchandise through the 
aisles of the selling departments of the store), one small 
dummy elevator (for the handling of single packages 
of unusual size or type), and a spiral chute (this last 
for the despatch of sold goods). 

The selling-floor location of these utility units deter- 
mines the zoning system of the warehouses on the tenth. 
There is a zone to each unit. While from that zone the 
requisitioned merchandise descends to the selling 
department which has asked for it by its own unit — 
which always is closest to it. Haul is reduced to a min- 
imum. And system becomes simplicity. 

With the actual selling of the goods in the store that 
is to come we have no concern at this moment. It is 
quite enough to say that the methods and the ideals that 
have brought Macy selling up to its present point are 
to be continued there, in the main at least, although 
broadened and advanced as future necessity may dictate. 
But with the despatch of the goods once sold in the new 
store we have an intimate and personal interest. 

We have bought our pair of shoes. The financial 
end of the transaction is concluded. We have asked — 
as most of us ask — to have them delivered. Now 
follow their movement: 

The clerk takes them to the packer. This, however, 
is but a mere detail. It is their future course that 
interests us. And if we had eyes properly X-rayed 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 273 

and f arseeing we might observe that from the hands 
of the packer they will go presently to the spiral 
descending chute of the nearest utility unit. 

Now we shall indeed need our new X-ray eyes. 
They follow the package for us — down the chute — 
with its gradients and curvatures so cleverly devised as 
to bring our purchase to the basement in just the right 
time and in just the right order — and into and upon the 
next stage of its progress. 

Steadily moving conveyor-belts along each outer wall 
of the building receive the constant droppage of the 
packages from the six spirals of the utility units. 
Together these two long belts converge upon a ter- 
minal, the revolving-table, in the terminology of the 
present store. And here our packages receive fresh 
personal attention. 

In the chapter upon Macy's delivery department we 
paid a careful attention to this revolving-table — which 
really is not a table at all and does not revolve. We 
saw it, then, as the very heart of the complex clearing- 
house of Macy distributions. It is, however, in itself 
a wonderfully simple thing, and yet when it was first 
installed it was regarded as nothing less than a triumph 
of efficiency. 

Fortunately we do progress in this gray old world. 
Today we see how the revolving-table can be improved. 
For one thing, today we see it cramped and inelastic — 
no more than eight men may work at it at a single shift. 
Yet when it was built no one in Macy's dreamed that 
more than eight men would ever be required to work 



274 The Romance of a Great Store 

at it at a single time. And even in times of great 
emergency, but eight! 

At the revolving-table in the new store, not eight but 
forty men may work simultaneously — when necessity 
dictates. The change has been effected by the simple 
process of elongating the "table." If a revolving-ring 
may be changed from round to square — and this was 
the very thing that Macy's accomplished in its present 
basement — why not from square to oblong? There is 
no negative answer to this question. And oblong it 
will become. And a present handling capacity of forty 
thousand packages a day can be increased to all the way 
from seventy-five thousand to ninety thousand. 

Yet the main principle changes not. It is only in 
detail that one sees one's shoes traveling outward on a 
different path in 1931 from that of 1921. The great 
conveyors that lead from the revolving-table of today 
to the various delivery classifications as they are now 
made, will so lead in the new arrangement of things to 
such classifications as may then be made : only they will 
no longer be revolving-tables, but will in due time 
become the moving backbone of very long tables in the 
basement mezzanine, similar to the one which we saw 
extending the full length of the great tenth floor. And 
from those long tables, running the entire width of the 
building and up just under the basement ceiling, the 
sheet-writers will recognize their individual group of 
packages (by means of the clearly written numerals 
upon them), lift them off the slowly moving belt and 
make record of them, for the delivery department's 
own protection. After which, it is but the twist of the 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 275 

wrist to thrust them into the bins, separately assigned 
to each driver's run. 

So go our shoes, or come, if you prefer, to have it 
that way. Rapidly, orderly, systematically. System 
never departs from their handling. Even in the 
driver's own little compartment-bin there are four 
levels, or shelves, and each is inclined gently and 
floored with rollers so that he can pick out the packages 
for his run with greater facility. And in placing the 
packages upon each of these levels, the sheet-writer, 
well trained to his job, begins a rough process of assort- 
ment by streets. 

Now we are come to wagon delivery, itself. Now 
we shall see why Macy's will not have to clutter Thirty- 
fourth Street with a long row of its delivery trucks. 
The length of such a row may easily be estimated when 
one realizes that sixty electric trucks will stand simul- 
taneously at sixty loading stations in the new basement, 
with a reserve or reservoir space there for twenty-two 
more. Moreover, this basement will serve as a garage 
at night and on Sundays for these trucks. There is no 
fire risk whatsoever in the storage of an electrically 
driven motor vehicle. So the new Macy basement will 
not only be able to store this considerable fleet but to 
charge its batteries and make necessary light repairs 
upon it from time to time. 

Access to and from this basement — and the sub-base- 
ment — is by means of elevators; not only the two 
which we have seen reaching aloft to the eleventh floor, 
but two more just beside them for sole service between 



276 The Romance of a Great Store 

the level and the two basements. As a matter of 
operating expediency it will be easy indeed to arrange 
in the early morning rush, or at any other time when 
emergency may so demand, to operate all four elevators 
in exclusive service between the street and basements. 
With such a battery Macy's can perform a genuine 
rapid-fire of discharging merchandise. 

To the mind of the novice there immediately flashes 
the thought: why not use ramps — long, sloping drive- 
ways — from the street level to the basement? Long 
ago the architects of the new building asked themselves 
that very question. It was, in this particular case at 
least, rather hard to answer. The main basement of 
Macy's is very high. To install a ramp — double- 
tracked, of course, for vehicles both ascending and 
descending — of any easy practical grade would there- 
fore have required a great deal of valuable floor-space. 
So, for the moment, they dismissed the ramp idea for 
motor trucks and held to that of elevators. The 
Boston Store in Chicago solved the problem. It is the 
same store that has successfully installed descending 
escalators, floor upon floor. 

Out of the sub-basement of that Chicago store the 
Macy investigators saw thirty-two cars come, all inside 
of eight minutes j and all upon elevators. That settled 
the question for the big shop in Herald Square. Ele- 
vators it should have for this service, and elevators it 
will have, even for the big five-ton trucks that go into 
the deep sub-basement for the hampers for suburban 
delivery as well as large special packages. Furniture, 
however, as in the present store, will be both sold and 



In Which Macy's Prepares to Build Anew 277 

packed and shipped from an upper floor of its own, the 
large truck elevators to the eleventh floor being also 
used for this purpose. 

The sub-basement of the new plan is in so many 
respects a replica of the main basement delivery service 
that it requires no special description here. It, too, 
has been designed, not only amply large enough for the 
present needs of Macy's, but for that mythical traffic of 
1932, which we now know is really not mythical at all, 
but a matter of rather exact scientific reckoning. 

Architects' drawings are indeed fascinating things} 
doubly fascinating when one comes to consider all the 
infinite thought and labor and patience which have 
entered into their fabrication. I shall not, however, 
carry you further into the details of the plans for the 
new Macy's. You now have seen enough to give you 
at least a fair idea of the main structure for the 
enlarged store. You have seen how carefully and how 
ingeniously the great main traffic streams through the 
huge edifice are to be carried— to be brought together, 
when they needs must be brought together, and kept 
apart when properly they should be kept apart. Add, 
in your own mind, to this fundamental structure, all of 
the refinements which you expect to find in the modern 
retail establishment today and you may begin to depict 
for yourself the Macy's that is to come — to construct 
for yourself at least a partial vision of the year 1932 in 
Herald Square. 



II. L'Envoi 

YESTERDAY Milady of Manhattan in her hoop- 
skirt and crinoline 5 today Milady in thick furs 
above her knees and thin silk stockings and high-heeled 
pumps below them: tomorrow . . . 

Why will you persist in dragging in tomorrow? Is 
it not enough to know that tomorrow Milady of the 
great metropolis of the Americas will still be shopping? 
You may set tomorrow a year hence, twenty years hence, 
fifty years in the misty future that is to come upon us 
and still make that statement in perfect safety. And 
twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years hence, even, 
Macy's should still be in Herald Square ready to wait 
Upon her needs and upon the needs of her men and 
children, too. 

To forecast far into the future is indeed dangerous. 
Only rash men undertake it. We know that 1932 is 
one thing, but that 1952 or even 1942 is quite another 
one. A savant of uptown Manhattan, who has a nice 
facility for handling census figures, not long ago pre- 
dicted that by 1950 little old New York would hold 
within its boundaries sixteen million people. He may 
know. I don't. And you are privileged to take your 
guess — with one man's guess almost if not quite as good 
as another's. 

A New York of sixteen million souls is an alluring 

279 



280 The Romance of a Great Store 

picture, if a bewildering one, withal. It is a fairly 
bewildering town with its six million of today. But I 
have not the slightest doubt that Rowland Hussey 
Macy said the selfsame thing of the New York of six 
hundred and fifty thousand souls, to which he first 
came, away back there in 1858. 

And the Macy's of 1952, serving its fair and goodly 
portion of those sixteen million souls, is indeed an 
alluring picture, which you may best construct for 
yourself. The store, itself, does well when it plans so 
definitely for 1932. Nevertheless, before you finally 
close the pages of this book, I should like to have it 
record a final picture upon your mind. It is the picture 
of a really great store. It runs from Broadway to 
Seventh Avenue, perhaps all the way to Eighth. It 
begins at Thirty-fourth Street and runs north — one, 
two, possibly even three or four blocks, or goodly por- 
tions of them. It employs ten, twelve, fifteen thou- 
sand workers. There are a thousand motor trucks in 
its delivery service — and a hundred aeroplanes as well. 
It has sixteen sub-stations, instead of six. Its own 
delivery limits run north to Peekskill and east to 
Bridgeport and to Huntington and west and south 
through at least half of New Jersey. 

Yet, above all this new enterprise there still towers 
the high addition which 1923 saw completed and added 
to the edifice, with the huge and flaming word 
"MACY'S" emblazoned by white electricity upon the 
blackened skies of night, visible all the way from 
Seventh Avenue to the thickly peopled range of the 
Orange mountains. 



V Envoi 281 

"Macy's," whistles the small boy upon the North 
River ferryboat, who has traveled afar with his 
geography book. "Macy's! That's a regular 
Gibraltar of a store!" 

THE END 



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